Midnight (1934)

Let's be realistic.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

. . . says one character in regard to "Ethel Saxton," whose electrocution is the focus of MIDNIGHT. Perhaps not since Thomas Edison's popular flick, ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT (1903; the pachyderm in question was Topsy, America's favorite African animal at the time), has electricity been so entertaining. (Just take a gander at the 10 goggle-eyed all-male witnesses licking their chops in Ol' Sparky's chamber moments before Ethel--who, like Topsy, got a bum rap--blazes away.) Obviously, if revived on a pay-per-view basis, public executions could be a huge new source of government revenue. As one of the French generals says during PATHS OF GLORY (1957), there's nothing like death by firing squad for public morale (even if the human sacrifices are Random Selectees of Society's Best, as is the case in GLORY). Since the Red States have virtually exhausted their supplies of lethal injection drugs, more cinematic electrocutions, hangings, and possibly the guillotine could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, while setting ratings records. When push comes to shove, the dad in MIDNIGHT has no problem in tossing his own daughter under the wheels of justice, not unlike every Red State taxpayer who sleeps easy at night no matter now many guiltless people (and\or family members) the Innocence Project proves they've gratuitously had a hand in rubbing out. After all, you cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, and every egg has parents.

(There are Spoilers) " Call it Murder" is an overly sanctimonious film about how the justice system works only for the rich and well connected among us. As for those of us who're just barley making it in this cold cruel and unjust world tough luck and take whatever you can get, or not get, from the system if your to stand trail before it. This is what happens to housewife Ethel Saxton, Helen Flint, who was convicted for the murder of her philandering husband and is to be executed by the state at the stroke of "Midnight"; Which is the original title of the movie.As the minutes tick away until Ethel is strapped into the electric chair an unruly crowd assembles in front of the home of the jury foreman Edward Weldon, O.P Heggie, who was instrumental in convicting Ethel of first degree murder. Inside Weldon's house newsman Noland, Hery Hull, had got Weldon's sleazy son in-law Joe Bigger, Lynne Overman, to secretly help him install a radio broadcasting system to broadcast the reaction of Weldon and his family members as soon as the news of Ethel's execution is made public on the radio.Weldon's free spirited and ultra, or bleeding heart, liberal daughter Stella, Sidney Fox, always felt that Ethel Saxton was innocent in the murder of her husband since it was an crime of passion not premeditated murder. Stella is very much against what he father did in sending Ethel to the electric chair who's so strict in his views of law and order that he, in the way he talks, would even send a family member to death if in fact the law justifies it. By the time the movie ends Weldon would in fact get his chance to prove if his actions matches his words with his beloved daughter finding herself in the same situation that poor and condemned Ethel faces now with death just minutes away!***SPOILERS*** The film is about as convoluted as it can get in showing us how those like the well connected Edward Weldon can grease the wheels of justice to have things come out in his, or his family's, favor. With Weldon's daughter Stella openly admitting her responsibility for the murder of her hoodlum boyfriend Gan Boni, Humphrey Bogart, Weldon gets his good friend and city District Attorney Plunkett, Moffat Johnston, to make her change her mind with his usual shyster like double-talk and brain twisting psychological explanations that no one, not even Pluckett, could quite fully understand! This is the same Plunkett who's hair splitting and full of hot air shyster tactics, in reverse, sent the poor and knowing one one in high places, like Edward Weldon, Ethel Saxton straight to the Sing Sing electric chair!Even though future Hollywood superstar Humphrey Bogart was given top billing in the Video Tape release version of "Midnight", which was called "Call it Murder", his biggest contribution to the film was getting himself shot and killed off camera. Were in fact never shown who exactly rubbed Bogart, or Gar Boni, out but made to think that it was his girlfriend, whom he just dumped, Stella Weldon who did it. It's after Plunkett's long and confusing explanation of what were the circumstances that lead to Gar Boni's murder that you, as well as Stella and everyone else in the movie, aren't quite sure who did Gar Boni in! It may have even been the luckless Ethel Saxton who, despite being executed at the exact moment of Gar Boni's murder, somehow from beyond her grave, or the city morgue, got to him!

Clever but slow in development. Would love to see David Mamet re-work the script and direct a remake without the Hollywood ending, possibly leaving us hanging as to Edward Weldon's choice and Stella Weldon's fate. Also, the Ethel Saxon character should be more completely and sympathetically developed.

Humphrey Bogart plays Garboni a gangster involved with the daughter of a jury foreman who helped convict a women of shooting the man who betrayed her. The pressure that falls upon this man and those around him makes the films story. This film is interesting for two reasons it explores guilt from two different perspectives on two different people giving the audience a wide range of emotions and consequences of dealing with the murder. Secondly it features Bogart in a small role, that should have been given more screen time. Bogart was still relatively unknown to the movie going public at the time it was made, of course he has a part that can be categorized as a 'heavy' a role he would fill many times until Maltese Falcon, where he would break through and finally play a lead role that did not require him to be a gangster.