Just perfect...

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Wow... all that going on. This couldn't have been made after the film code started being enforced. Judge tries to hide his girlfriend in another part of town so she can't testify against him. All hell breaks loose. Walter Huston is shady Judge Moffat, and thinks he has all the answers. Lewis Stone (Grand Hotel) is another judge trying to right the wrongs. Phillips Holmes and Anita Page get caught up in the illegal drama, as the neighbors next door, Mike and Mary. The plot kind of runs all over the place, but it's all done pretty well. This turns into a story of cleaning up the dirty judges running the court system. Good restoration job. Sound and picture quality are excellent. Huston had only been in Hollywood a couple years, but gives a fine performance. Directed by Woody van Dyke. He and Holmes both died quite young, van Dyke from suicide and Holmes in a plane crash. Anita Page had an interesting career... she had started in the silents, moved into the talkies, took a LONG break, and made a few more in the 2000s... in her 90s! Catch this one on Turner Classics -- an opportunity to see Huston near the beginning of his career.

After concealing his mistress in the office closet, corrupt New York "Night Court" Judge Walter Huston (as Andrew J. Moffett) answers a reporter's questions regarding an investigation led by fellow jurist Lewis Stone (as William "Will" Osgood). Denying all irregularities, Mr. Huston carries on his tough sentencing of prostitutes and petty thieves while letting hardened criminals off the hook. Later, Mr. Huston orders mistress Noel Francis (as Lillian "Lil" Baker) to lay low in a poor section of town, to avoid being questioned. She has some incriminating evidence in her purse, which is seen by pretty apartment neighbor Anita Page (as Mary)...The young wife and mother decides to say noting about "Mrs. Moffett's" bank book, but Huston is taking no chances. He has Ms. Page railroaded. When her husband, handsome cab-driver Phillips Holmes (as Mike Thomas), shows up in court wondering what happened to his wife, the dirty judge takes the couple's baby away. The plot thickens with murder as Mr. Holmes endeavors to untangle the mess. This early "talkie" is nicely handled by all. An unusual pacing works to the film's advantage, making a series of shocking events engrossing. Holmes is an appealing "working class hero" and receives an outstanding cast of co-stars.******* Night Court (4/23/32) W.S. Van Dyke ~ Phillips Holmes, Walter Huston, Anita Page, Noel Francis

Walter Huston is as always excellent, here as a bad guy. He's a corrupt judge. He moves his girlfriend out of her tony digs and into a working class building. There, she lives next-door to a young cab driver, his wife, and infant. The wife happens to glance at a bankbook of the judge's that the baby took and next thing we know, the adoring young mother is set up on a charge of prostitution.Phillips Holmes, the cabdriver, at first is devastated hat the young girl he married has turned to the streets. Then he starts to realize that she was framed.He is tortured by hoods of the judge and other bad guys and then he gets the judge and tortures him till he tells the truth.This was very shocking for its time. So was "Scarface," made at around the same time. Everyone knows about "Scarface" but "Night Court" is undeservedly unknown. Both are precursors t the very best of film noir.(The only wrong note -- irrelevant to the plot but somewhat amusing -- is when the always fragile looking Holmes is given line describing himself as a big Palooka.)

Night Court was a slight, but interesting, entry in the pre-code genre of social commentary or expose´ films of the early 1930s…I would say the same group that included the seminal `Public Enemy'. What made this film a joy to watch was not the revelatory peek of criminal machinations pervading the lower levels of the NYC justice system, but the relationship between the cabbie and his wife, unfettered by Production Code standards in effect just a few years later. The scenes of Mike and Mary and their baby in the one bedroom flat they shared were charming, and Anita Page evoked a warmth and naturalism uncommon in those days when the talkie was only 3 years old. No wonder she's still working 70 years later! Walter Huston was downright despicable, and his speeches to his night court denizens about maintaining law and order were rather chilling considering the depth of his criminal manipulations of the justice system. And the setting up of Mary Thomas as a prostitute to discredit her was an eye-opener and quite frank. The film moved along at a good clip, facilitated in no small measure I'm sure by the breezy direction of `One-Take' Woody Van Dyke who had a reputation for bringing a film ahead of schedule and under budget. Perhaps it is for this reason that scenes play out naturalistically, with the actors given what appears to be some latitude with the dialogue and action in order to move things along. Some occasional hammy acting doesn't really detract from the pre-code forthrightness of the picture.