Summary
A brassy Hudson dawn, river fog peeling like wet parchment, frames two honeymooning couples who—through a slapstick mis-timing of gangplanks and garment trunks—are cleaved into the wrong pairs. Percy Darling, all coltish élan, sprints shore-ward with the voracious Mrs. Kettle; the vessel, indifferent, slides toward Albany, leaving Richard Kettle—laconic, bookish—and the ethereal Mrs. Darling to improvise matrimony in order to placate the era’s bristling moral sentries. Their charade is a pas de deux of sidelong glances and trembling hotel pens: signatures forged, adjoining keys surrendered, the corridor gas-lamps flickering like gossip. Come sunrise, the abandoned spouses reappear, scandal telescoped into a single lobby tableau—arms interlocked, cheeks flushed with counterfeit connubial bliss—only to unravel in stammers, laughter, and the brisk re-sorting of vows. The film, a feather-light social farce, thus pirouettes on the razor edge between propriety and desire, exposing marriage as both costume and covenant.
Synopsis
College friends Percy Darling and Richard Kettle take their new wives on board a boat going from New York City to Albany. Just before sailing, however, Mrs. Kettle and Percy realize that they have left some baggage on shore, and so rush out to get it. The boat leaves without them, and a distressed Mrs. Darling and Richard, left in each other's company, decide to pose as husband and wife to prevent a scandal. When the boat docks, they learn that the last train has left, and so they hesitantly check into a hotel as a couple and spend the night together. The next day, Mrs. Kettle and Percy track down the "newlyweds" and are shocked to see them in the hotel lobby, arm in arm. The ruse is quickly explained, and the correct couples are soon sorted out.
Review Excerpt
"
Picture, if you will, the Hudson in sepia churn: a sidewheeler exhales white plumes against a graphite sky, while tin-type newlyweds clutch monogrammed valises like talismans against the unknown. Over Night—a curio from the fecund year of 1922—unfurls within that liminal steam, where a single mislaid trunk detonates the entire social order.
Philip Bartholomae’s screenplay, lacquered with urbane flippancy, treats matrimony as a shell game: shuffle the partners, hide the pea of fidelity beneath..."
