Too much of everything

Strong and Moving!

Good concept, poorly executed.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The Midnight Story has Tony Curtis starring as a young motorcycle cop who was raised in an orphanage and the priest who ran it is knifed to death at the midnight hour. As this priest was the single most important figure in his life Curtis wants to get reassigned to homicide to help catch the killer. But he doesn't get reassigned so Curtis quits the San Francisco PD and goes to work on his own. Someone in that Fisherman's Wharf community did the deed and he'll find who it is.His suspicions fall on Gilbert Roland playing his usual happy go lucky self as one of the fisherman, but Roland is a man who is hiding something obviously.Curtis's efforts to ingratiate himself with Roland work only too well. He gets a job with him and even boards with his family. He grows to like him and even more important he falls for Marisa Pavan who is Roland's cousin who also boards with him.Coming right before Tony's breakthrough role in Sweet Smell Of Success, The Midnight Story is a small indication of what Curtis was capable of. He turns in a fine job as the troubled and conflicted cop who wants more than anything to believe Roland is not capable of killing a priest. The real star of the film though is Roland. This part is one of the best he ever did on film.Some other outstanding performances are Argentina Brunetti as Roland's sister, Ted DeCorsia and Jay C. Flippen as Curtis's police superiors and one that is brief but memorable is Peggy Maley as a potential witness who could finger someone else for the murder. Her scene with Curtis, DeCorsia, Flippen, and Russ Conway as the cops questioning here is quite memorable.In his memoir Tony Curtis said he liked this film very much. So will you if you see it.

The Midnight Story (AKA: Appointment With A Shadow) is directed by Joseph Pevney and written by Edwin Blum and John Robinson. It stars Tony Curtis, Marisa Pavan, Gilbert Roland and Jay C. Flippen. Music is by Joseph Gershenson and CinemaScope cinematography is by Russell Metty.When a San Francisco priest is murdered, friend of the priest, Joe Martini (Curtis), a traffic cop, gets a hunch and ingratiates himself into the family of the man he thinks is responsible.Somehow it has become one of those 1950s black and white crime movies entered into film noir publications. It doesn't belong in that particular filmic chest, but it does ask to be sought out by fans of such 1950s fare. In actuality it's a whodunit? Thrusting a handsome and restrained Curtis into a murder mystery while his emotions get whacked from all sides. Filmed (joyously so) and set in Frisco, the makers never once play their hand to reveal what the finale will bring.The everyday life of a working and loving Italian-American family is vividly brought to life, luring us in to their world as intrigued but concerned observers - the North Beach District a sweaty backdrop just waiting to spill its secrets. Pevney keeps things brisk, never letting things sag, even as the inevitable romantic thread dangles (it's 1950s Tony Curtis after all), there's always an air of suspicion and mystery pulsing away in the narrative.Curtis fronts up for dressage, but delivers promise on an interesting role, but it's Roland's movie all the way. A damn fine turn that only comes to being in the final quarter. In support there is the sturdy presence of Flippen and Ted de Corsia, both of whom leave a telling mark. Each and all building to a finale, which may not contain the wallop one had hoped, but strikes a positive note and rounds it out as a film to seek out. 7/10

One night in San Francisco's seedy North Beach neighborhood, a beloved priest is attacked in an alley and stabbed to death. A traffic cop (Tony Curtis), who grew up in the orphanage the priest ran, takes the murder particularly hard but sees it as his chance to advance to the homicide squad. At the funeral, he spots a man (Gilbert Roland) so shaken that his rosary has cut into his hand, drawing blood. Curtis follows his hunch that this man knows something about the murder.Posing as a young fisherman fallen on hard times, he gets a job in Roland's crab shack on Fisherman's Wharf. Next, he's invited to live in the home Roland shares with his mother and his cousin (Marisa Pavan – Pier Angeli's twin sister). And for about half the movie, the noirish plot about the murder gets shoved onto the back burner like a kettle of red sauce in favor of an Italian-ethnic family drama (Curtis falls for Pavan, who plays hard to get, and so forth).Though it seems as if director Joseph Pevney has lost track of the suspense story, he hasn't – he interweaves it into the family dynamics. When Curtis finds out information that he thinks exonerates Roland, he's so relieved he asks Pavan to marry him. But at the engagement party, he discovers that Roland's alibi is full of holes....Falling late in the noir cycle, The Midnight Story recalls in its theme of a priest's killing (and in its San Francisco setting) the haunting little noir Red Light, of 1949. Red Light was pretty hard-core, while The Midnight Story is watered down with heart-warming vignettes. Still, it's more than an honorable try. Curtis doesn't make the role as unforgettable as Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success the same year, but he doesn't embarrass himself, either. Roland comes close to overdoing the lusty fisherman, but instinctively pulls short. Pavan, however, looks and acts like Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story. Special mention, however, ought to go to Jay C. Flippen, as Curtis' `rabbi' in the police department; one of the unsung stalwarts of the noir cycle, he brightens the screen whenever he turns up because he's sure to polish up a little gem of a performance.

In an unusually deep performance, Curtis plays a cop who goes undercover to try to find a priest's murderer. At times, the story seems to teeter on the precipice of turgid melodrama, but Curtis and Roland are always there to right the course. Roland is magnificent as the Italian patriarch whose family Curtis invades. The painstaking attention that the film gives the Italian neighborhood and its collective perspectives pays handsome dividends. Worth a look.