MIDNIGHT (1934)

In a nicely stylistic opening set in a courtroom, the camera pans across the faces of a judge, a jury, members of the press, and the people in the gallery as Ethel Saxton testifies that she didn't mean to kill her husband, that it was a crime of passion. But when jury foreman Edward Weldon (O.P. Heggie) asks her if she took money from him before or after the shooting, she admits it was after. In the gallery, Weldon's daughter Stella (Sidney Fox) gets to chatting with charming gangster Gar Boni (Humphrey Bogart). She thinks it may well have been a crime of passion, and Gar replies, "That jury doesn't know what passion is." As it happens, in the jury room, Weldon says that he has a doubt that it was an unpremeditated murder, and soon, despite public opinion running in her favor, the jury finds her guilty of first-degree murder, with death as the punishment. Weldon is soon being vilified as the person who was most responsible for the verdict and on the night of Ethel's execution, the press is gathered outside his house. Among those inside are Weldon, his wife, his daughter Stella, her now-boyfriend Gar (who is about to leave town for a while, much to Stella's dismay), and Weldon's unemployed son-in-law Joe who has allowed Nolan (Henry Hull), a undercover reporter, to visit in order to get a scoop on Weldon's reaction at midnight, the moment of Ethel's death. Gar leaves to catch his train and a distraught Stella goes after him. Moral issues involving the Saxton case are discussed, and we occasionally cut to the preparations for her execution. Weldon remains confident in his decision to vote guilty, but things change suddenly when, at the stroke of midnight, as Ethel is put to death, Stella apparently shoots Gar to death in a car as he goes to leave. Weldon, of course, has a change of heart and calls the DA to his home, hoping that there might be a reason to classify this as a "legitimate" crime of passion.

Based on a play, this rather stagy melodrama is interesting if not as compelling as it could have been. Director Chester Erskine manages to give the film some nice visual jolts here and there—the courtroom opening, the juxtaposition of Ethel's execution with the shooting of Gar, lots of shots of people's hands. Some of the acting is quite good, in particular Fox, Bogart, Hull, and Moffatt Johnson (pictured), a British stage actor in his single film role as the DA. The characters of Joe, his wife, and his son Arthur (Richard Whorf, who eventually became a movie and TV director) are barely sketched in, leaving a little too much screen time to O.P. Heggie who is adequate but no more as Weldon. Spoilers are inevitable here, as discussing the ending is necessary to evaluating the film. Ultimately, the DA decides that, based on some flimsy physical evidence, it wasn't Stella who shot Gar but a gangland associate. The climactic actions are left murky, as are the points about justice and morality. We know that Gar is carrying a gun, but when he is shot, all we see is an isolated shot of a gun surrounded by darkness, so it seem possible that Stella, who is in a mental haze about what happened, didn't actually kill Gar, and if she did, it indeed does seem like an unpremeditated crime of passion. The ending is really one of the more interesting ones of the pre-Code period, and I'm curious how it was received in 1934. The New York Times review at the time doesn't express shock or concern about the potentially controversial ending, which I would think is still controversial today. A reviewer at Pre-Code.com notes that the film feels a little like a parlor game designed to start discussion rather than a satisfying narrative. At any rate, the ending still shocks a bit, and between that and the acting, I would recommend this, with the caveat that it is a B-movie with fairly skimpy production values. An alternate title, Call It Murder, was used when the film was re-released in the 40s with Bogart, who was in the middle of the cast list in 1934, then put up at the top after he reached stardom. His role is pivotal, but indeed he doesn't have a lot of screen time. [Blu-ray]