NIGHT COURT

d. W.S. Van Dyke
USA, 1932

An outrageously corrupt judge complicates the lives of a happily married couple when he comes to believe the wife knows of evidence that can convict him.

NIGHT COURT is an MGM pre-code title with plenty going for it. It all starts off jovially enough, with the judge necking with his moll while reporters wait outside his chambers, pausing to accept a fat envelope of payoff money, then taking to the bench to hand out $5 fines for loitering and vagrancy to the parade of hookers and drunks stumbling through his courtroom.

Up to this point we were prepared to cheer the judge on in his flagrant abuses of power, in large part due to Walter Huston's reptilian charm. As NIGHT COURT develops, however, events grow increasingly nasty, until we realized we were watching a fairly cynical indictment of urban civic corruption.

MGM has never been our favorite of the major 30s studios. Their sanctimony always put us off. Early in our screening of NIGHT COURT, we expected cardboard corruption to be ultimately put down by status quo values. But while NIGHT COURT steers toward a crime-does-not-pay ending, the road becomes quite rough, and at times it is not at all certain that it will get there.

Given the state of civic authority during Prohibition, it would be safe to say that the corruption depicted in NIGHT COURT is consistent with the realities of big city life at the time. (Indeed, user comments at the IMDB page for NIGHT COURT claim the film was inspired by a real case. We have not yet researched this.) NIGHT COURT contains a few melodramatic elements, but the extent and viciousness of the corruption shown is likely not exaggerated.

The film also maintains realism in its portrayal of poverty - as when a woman accused of soliciting is grateful for being sent to jail for 90 days, because she will find food and a bed there.

NIGHT COURT portrays prostitution as a commonplace, treating it as something women are just prone to do in tough times. When the judge frames the innocent wife as a streetwalker, her cab-driver husband is outraged with disbelief - however, his defense of himself is compromised by the fact that most of his fares are prostitutes on their way to and from meeting with johns. The world of NIGHT COURT is nearly as corrupt as it would later be in Films Noir. (I'd say NIGHT COURT avoids being a Noir for a variety of reasons, although it's certainly a kindred example.)

NIGHT COURT came to us via TCM; it is worth seeking out the next screening there.

15 October 2009