Midnight Mary (1933)

One of my all time favorites.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

What, Mary Martin, alias Peter Pan, Nellie Forbush, Larry Hagman's mother? No, this Mary Martin is Loretta Young, who was twirling through doors onto people's TV sets in the 1950's while the real Mary Martin was asking us to "think lovely thoughts". This Mary Martin, as the court tells us over and over at the beginning of the movie, is a sinful woman who deserves to be punished for sins Young reveals to us in flashbacks. At first, these flashbacks resemble something out of a D.W. Griffith silent movie (with Young instead of Lillian Gish as a 9 year old!), but eventually, it is this quick cuts of various flashback scenes that will grab the viewer and never let go as her story of degradation unfolds.Mary is obviously a good girl with a troubled past and turns bad through no fault of her own, although it is insinuated that deep inside, that is all a facade. She is supposed to represent the plight of many girls affected by the depression, exploited by the nasty racketeer Ricardo Cortez. Her life briefly turns around when she meets the well-off Franchot Tone, but like most girls in these kinds of movies, that only lasts for a short time, leading her into all kinds of serious trouble. What makes this pre-code drama better than most is director William Wellman's exquisite use of quick-changing scenes and more realistic performances, even from Ms. Young who seems to have taken on a Joan Crawford persona. I like her more as a sinner than a saint, and here, she combines the two effortlessly. Cortez is appropriately slimy, while Tone adds some humor to his noble good guy. Una Merkel and Andy Devine, sometimes paired together as a comic relief duo, are the comic reliefs here, but they don't work together in this film.

A ravishingly beautiful 20-year-old Loretta Young is "Midnight Mary" in this 1933 melodrama directed by William Wellman. The film also stars Ricardo Cortez, Franchot Tone, and Una Merkel. Young, on trial for murder of Cortez character, a gangster, is waiting for the jury to come in. She tells her story in flashback. Down on her luck, recently out of prison, she meets Cortez, becomes his girl and gets the easy life. One night, during a shooting, the wealthy Tone helps her escape. After she receives secretarial training, he gets her a job in his law firm. But her past catches up with her.Loretta Young is stunning and her clothes are fantastic. She gives a very good performance. Since it's a pre-code drama, there's talk of sex, suggestive scenes, and the women get slapped around.Very entertaining and absorbing, with Young a class act all the way.

This film is done in an old fashioned style that doesn't play so well for modern audiences who aren't familiar with the style of early 30s "Pre-Code" films. Since I am a huge fan of older films (much more than modern ones), I could forgive all the melodrama and improbabilities that occur in the film--it was the style of the day.The film begins with Loretta Young on trial. Oddly, she refuses to do anything to defend herself and the film soon goes to a flashback of her life. Oddly, director Wellman decided to use Loretta and Una Merkel for some of the early scenes--where they were both supposed to be only 9 years-old! He used large props and changed their dress and hair styles, but they looked a heck of a lot older than 9! In the teenage portion, Loretta was able to pull this off much better since she was still rather youthful when she made this movie.All these early snippets help to show how Loretta gravitated towards a life of crime even though, in some ways, she was a nice girl. When the film moves forward to the late 1920s, the movie slows its pace and instead of brief snippets we follow her as she joins up with a gang headed by tough guy Ricardo Cortez. Here, she is reunited with Merkel--who is quite the floozy--a big departure compared to ladies she played in most other films. Aside from allowing herself to be slapped around, Una also apparently loves premarital sex, as she later gets pregnant. They never say where the kid came from, but I assume it wasn't an immaculate conception! With this and some of the other violence in the film, it's obvious that this Pre-Code film is indeed typical of the racier style of films of the early 30s--something that would be banned starting just a year later with the new and tougher Production Code.Along the way, Loretta meets up with the rich and very nice Franchot Tone. However, Loretta realizes that her checkered past will kill Tone's career as a lawyer, so she quiet disappears--turning herself into the police for her part in a robbery. When she gets out of jail, she deliberately avoids Tone and goes back to the brutal and nasty Cortez--all because she loves Tone too much to mess up his life.Exactly where it goes from there and how it all ends up in court is very entertaining, but I don't want to spoil the surprises. Despite being a tad old fashioned, the Pre-Code morality also makes the film pretty exciting, as most people don't realize how wicked these old films were (they were definitely NOT prudes like we like to think they were). A busy but highly entertaining script, decent performances and excellent direction--this is worth a look.

This is a seldom-discussed but highly significant title in the pre-code canon, as it delineates the compromises a pretty and (originally) moral young woman must make to extricate herself from poverty during the depression. Overall, it's a predictable melodrama, very typical of its period, and the fact that Wild Bill Wellman was for some reason working at MGM for this one tends to stultify the brashness that was his trademark in his early years at Warners. Nonetheless, the tricky editing is very Warners-like and keeps the story moving at a rapid pace, particularly in the jaw-dropping montage where the eponymous character loses her virginity. Most importantly, the script is very frank about sex and absolutely cynical about American society at the time. The most notorious scene is all innuendo -- in order to distract her gangster paramour, Mary inaudibly whispers in his ear, obviously relating in quite some detail the pleasures she will endow him with if only he comes to bed with her immediately. Loretta Young is luminous as always and Ricardo Cortez has a nice time with his role as a confident hoodlum who knows he has her on a string. As for Franchot Tone and Grady Sutton...