This Is the Night Blu-ray review
Apr 19, 2026- Permalink
Frank Tuttle’s This Is the Night is a 1932 pre-Code comedy that marks the film debut of Cary Grant. Being pre-Code, the movie has fun with infidelity as Olympian Stephen Mathewson (Grant) arrives home early from the Games. His wife, Claire (Thelma Todd), has planned a romantic getaway to Venice with her lover, Gerald (Roland Young). Stephen is told it’s actually a couples getaway and suddenly Gerald must find a fake wife. He ends up hiring a French actress, Germaine (Lili Damita), but will the deception actually work? The cast also includes Charles Ruggles, who manages to throw additional wrenches in the plans as Gerald’s friend, Bunny. Universal is releasing this film as they hold the rights to much of Paramount’s pre-1950 library. Thanks to them and Allied Vaughn, I had a chance to take a look at this Blu-ray release.
The 1080p AVC encoded digital transfer is presented in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio. The disc actually contains two versions of the film: a black and white version and a version where night scenes have a blue tint. It was my first time encountering this, so I looked around. Apparently, the tinting practice was a bit of a holdover from the silent days. The tinting not only helped give the night scenes a different mood, but also in 1932 lighting low-light scenes was more difficult, so these were shot in lighter conditions and then tinted to help designate night. It’s great that they were included in this release. Moving on from our 1932 cinematography lesson, the image is quite crisp, though we do lose a little bit of detail in items like black clothing. Grain levels are very good and though there are occasional source material scratches and blemishes, they are not that often.
On the audio side of things, we have an English DTS-HD Master Audio HD 2.0 Mono soundtrack. Subtitles are available for English SDH. Given its age, it’s a very clean soundtrack. Dialogue is clear and prioritized in the mix.
The disc does not come with a digital code and apart from the tinted option, there are no other special features.
This Is the Night is fun comedy that gets to be a little more fun as it was shot before the Hays Code restricted a lot of themes and topics in films. With a nice audio and video presentation and the debut of Cary Grant, it’s a nice addition to your film library.