Night Court (1932)

In the Pre-Code Era MGM at Least Tried Once in a While to be Socially Relevant and Concerned. In This One the Studio Ventured Into WB Territory with a Rather Nasty Story About a Corrupt Judicial System at the Bottom Level, the Night Court.A Good Cast Makes the Most of this Heavy Melodrama About a Married Couple with an Infant being Sucked Into This Cesspool of Corruption Only Because of Proximity. What Goes On Here is Not Pretty to Look At. Some Pre-Code Situations are Exploited to Explain the Frame-Up with Prostitution On Display Throughout This Rather Ugly Picture of Depression Era Folks Being Railroaded by the System and the Authorities. The Odds are Overwhelming and Only Determination and Some Luck Can Get Them Out of It.Aside from the Heavy Drinkers and Undraped Females the Film Contains Some Brutal Beatings and Truly Evil Characters. At One Point Judge Walter Huston Says..."Get me some Bad Boys, some Really Bad Boys!". Some of the Story is Gut-Wrenching when it Concerns the Happy Couple's Baby. The Movie is Not Easy Entertainment and Tries Mightily to Make a Statement About Some Social Concerns at the Time. The Ending May be a Tidy Wrap-Up but it is a Welcome Relief and Although Just a Fictional Placebo, that's About All a Movie Can Offer.

A great little Pre-Coder with Walter Huston playing a slimeball crooked judge being investigated by a committee headed by honorable judge Lewis Stone. Huston is such a creep in this. He sends an innocent woman to jail on a trumped-up charge, has her husband beaten up, AND has their kid taken away from them. All because he wrongly believed the woman knew something about his crooked activities. What a bastard! Walter Huston made a lot of interesting movies in the '30s and this is certainly one of them. He does a good job with an evil unconscionable character. Anita Page and Phillips Holmes are great as the young couple Huston sets out to destroy. Jean Hersholt has a small part as a friend of Holmes. This is a really good one for fans of the kind of gritty urban crime dramas that were made in the early '30s. Pretty compelling stuff.

Made 73 years ago, "Night Court" is a very good, gritty precode about corruption in high places. In this case, it's a judge, played by Walter Huston.When a young woman, Mary (Anita Page) finds a bankbook left behind by a neighbor, she returns it, and finds herself sentenced to the work house for six months. The money belongs to Judge Moffett (Huston), who, to keep his activities quiet, hangs out in his girlfriend's apartment. The Judge believes that Mary looked at the bankbook and knows where he keeps his money. He sets her up and has her arrested as a prostitute. Her baby is put into care, leaving her poor cab-driver husband (Phillips Holmes) with nothing, and thanks to Moffett's girlfriend, he's even doubting his wife's innocence.However, he knows in his heart that Mary isn't capable of such a thing and sets out to clear her.The original was written by Mark Hellinger, a reporter, and producer of "Naked City" in 1948. The story is loosely based on a real-life character.Though some of the acting is melodramatic, as this was the style of the day, it's still compelling. Walter Huston is terrific, mean as dirt, and Holmes and Page are very sympathetic. Anita Page, about 22 here, worked until she died in 2008! Philips Holmes died in 1942 in a plane crash. For some reason, he reminds me of Tony Goldwyn.Three other cast members of note: Mary Carlisle (who as of this writing is still alive) as an honest judge's daughter, Lewis Stone as the honest judge, and Jean Hersholt as the building janitor.Very good and absorbing, though it's stylistically of the time.

Disregard the mundane title, this is a good movie. The website classifies its genre as a crime/ thriller picture, and it is exactly that. It stars Walter Huston, arguably America's best actor, as a terminally corrupt judge who is interested in self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. Rotten to the core, he victimizes a young couple with a baby he suspects knows something about his lurid after-hours affairs. Huston has never been better when at his worst and runs up against a good guy (in this case, a good judge), who, as they used to say in the 30's, wants to 'get the goods' on him. Good Guy Judge is played by Lewis Stone (Judge Hardy, of Andy Hardy fame).Things get worse before they get better, and the scenes with Anita Page, as the young wife arrested on a phony charge, are hard to watch. Phillips Holmes plays her husband in one of the best roles of his short career (he was the cowardly weasel in "An American Tragedy").The movie, made so long ago, is outdated particularly in the resolution of the cases that come before Judge Moffett. Defendants are held and tried at breakneck speed, often with out benefit of counsel. As we know, the wheels of justice grind very slowly nowadays. And everybody has at least one lawyer.Do yourself a favor and get past the unimaginative title - this film is proof that you can't judge a book by its cover, or a movie by its title.