Midnight, written by that matchless Hollywood pair Billy Wilder and Charles Backett, is that rare Hollywood bird: a comedy where practically everything works. Poverty-stricken Claudette Colbert is stranded in Paris with only an evening gown to her name. She is hired by aristocrat John Barrymore to pose as a Hungarian countess, to divert the gigolo (Francis Lederer) who is wooing Barrymore's wife (Mary Astor). Don Ameche is a sarcastic cabdriver who befriends Colbert and watches the whole spectacle at the Barrymore home in disdain: What he isn't telling anyone (until the very end at least) is that he is a Count in disguise. The farcical complications come thick and fast, culminating in a less funny but still entertaining courtroom scene, in which the never-married Ameche and Colbert must request a divorce! Deftly skirting the censorship strictures of the period, Midnight is a peak-form product from Hollywood's finest year, as well as the high water mark in the career of director Mitchell Leisen.