You're going to have to be a great fan of silent movies to enjoy Midnight. It feels like it might have been the first talkie ever made, with the screenwriter and his actors experimenting with dialogue. Director Chester Erskine tries out camera angles that were probably inventive in 1934 but now seem obvious and old-hat. For example, as Helen Flint paces in her jail cell, the camera repeatedly cuts back and forth to O.P. Heggie pacing in his living room (with the camera situated behind the staircase's banister rungs) as he wrestles with his guilt. There are tons of silences and exaggerated expressions that would have worked in a silent movie, but will make you groan unless you have unlimited patience.
I'd better tell you the plot, since so far, I'm making this movie sound terrible. The foreman of a jury (Heggie) feels terribly guilty for condemning a woman to the electric chair, and he stays up till midnight with his family on the night of her execution. His daughter (Sidney Fox) is dating a gangster (Humphrey Bogart). He's unknowingly the plot of a drawn-out robbery, and a newspaperman (Henry Hull) visits the house hoping to get an inside scoop on the man's reactions. In theory, it's an interesting story. Had it been a silent movie, it probably would have been better. Had the editor tightened everything up and cut twenty minutes off the running time, it also would have been better. But, if you want to see a very young Humphrey Bogart in a movie where he doesn't get a high billing and only has a few minutes of screen time, you can rent it. I watched it for Henry Hull, who wasn't made up to be an old man for once. He looked very handsome, so I did have one reward for sitting through it!
I'd better tell you the plot, since so far, I'm making this movie sound terrible. The foreman of a jury (Heggie) feels terribly guilty for condemning a woman to the electric chair, and he stays up till midnight with his family on the night of her execution. His daughter (Sidney Fox) is dating a gangster (Humphrey Bogart). He's unknowingly the plot of a drawn-out robbery, and a newspaperman (Henry Hull) visits the house hoping to get an inside scoop on the man's reactions. In theory, it's an interesting story. Had it been a silent movie, it probably would have been better. Had the editor tightened everything up and cut twenty minutes off the running time, it also would have been better. But, if you want to see a very young Humphrey Bogart in a movie where he doesn't get a high billing and only has a few minutes of screen time, you can rent it. I watched it for Henry Hull, who wasn't made up to be an old man for once. He looked very handsome, so I did have one reward for sitting through it!