The Midnight Story (1957) is a combo whodunit and family melodrama. It’s a fine looking film with an odd story and a great setting.
Orphanage-raised Joe (Tony Curtis) quits his job as a motorcycle cop to go all in on an investigation of the murder of his mentor, a beloved priest. He spots an agitated Sylvio (Gilbert Roland) at the priest’s funeral, assumes he is the killer and – implausibly – ingratiates himself into moving in with Sylvio’s family. Joe gets sweet on Sylvio’s comely and spunky cousin (Marisa Pavan).
Sylvio’s family and Joe are Italian-Americans living in North Beach, and the movie was shot on location in San Francisco. The Midnight Story successfully peers into the working class Italian culture in 1950s San Francisco. We see iconic San Francisco locations like the crab pots at Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach’s Washington Square.
Tony Curtis had been making movies for eight years and, for six years, had been a leading man in lightweight fare like The Midnight Story. But his next picture was The Sweet Smell of Success, and Some Like It Hot followed two years later. In The Midnight Story, Curtis does everything that’s asked of him.
The screenplay’s dialogue is terrible – as hackneyed as it can get. But the fine cast does as well as possible, especially Gilbert Roland, playing Italian and looking younger than his 52 years. Gilbert’s charisma lets us see why he was a leading man in silent films 28 years before. (Silent Era Hollywood had Americanized the name of real Mexican Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso to Gilbert Roland and Latinized the name of Jacob Krantz to Ricardo Cortez. Go figure.)
Noir veterans in supporting roles easily filled their characters: Ted De Corsia as a swaggering detective lieutenant and Jay C. Flippen as a kindly police sarge.
The Midnight Story’s cinematographer is the prolific Russell Metty, who worked in all genres: Spartacus, Flower Drum Song, Written on the Wind, the Misfits. He also knew how to shoot a film noir: Ride the Pink Horse, Naked Alibi, The Stranger, Touch of Evil.
Director Joseph Pevney had a fairly undistinguished career, and worked exclusively in television after 1960.
Besides the San Francisco setting and Metty’s camera work, the most noir aspect of The Midnight Story is that Roland’s character is a PTSD-impacted veteran.
I couldn’t find The Midnight Story streaming anywhere, so I bought the DVD.
