Most of us understand that when we watch an old movie, allowances must be made for the times in which it was produced. There are some people who refuse to do this. They will hold a movie made fifty years ago to the same standards we have today, being outraged when, for example, Walter Neff in "Double Indemnity" says he has a "colored woman" come in and clean his apartment once a week, as if he should have known to say "African American" in 1944 when the movie was made. On the other hand, there are times when even with the best will in the world, we find ourselves appalled at what we see or hear in an old movie, as is the case with "Between Midnight and Dawn."
In a way, the sexism of this movie is the only thing remarkable about it. Otherwise, it is a routine story about a couple of cops taking on some mobsters, about which little needs to be said. And as for the sexism, I am not referring to the difference between the two cops regarding women who associate with hoodlums. Dan thinks they are no good and hates them, while Rocky believes that some of them are just frails, basically good girls who have been led astray. At the end of the movie, when a gangster's ex-girlfriend takes a bullet to keep Dan from being killed, he realizes he was wrong and that his deceased partner was right. That aspect of the movie was the best part.
It is the interaction between the two cops and Kate, who works for the police as a radio communicator. When they finally meet her, both men take a fancy to her and ask her to go to dinner with both of them, which must have seemed just as odd when this movie was made in 1950 as it does today. She declines their invitation, saying she has to work late, but they keep pressuring her. What they are doing borders on sexual harassment by today's standards, but by old-movie standards, she is wrong-headed for not going out with them, and they are right to keep pushing her. It is all supposed to be cute, but it is a little cringe-worthy.
But it gets worse. At the end of the evening, she tells them she has no intention of going out with either of them again, because she does not want to become involved with a policeman. Her father was a cop, and she saw how her mother worried he would be killed, and eventually he was. But her mother does not respect her opinion, and the two cops do not take "No" for an answer, so the mother rents the other half of the duplex she and Kate live in to the policemen, her mother's way of playing cupid. And as they move in, they purposely make lots of noise, singing and hammering, until Kate goes to see what is going on.
I know that the scene is played for laughs, but not only did I not laugh, it was at this point that my ability to make allowances for old movies gave way to sheer revulsion. Could it really be that audiences in 1950 approved of this behavior on the part of the mother and the two cops, and thought that what they did was appropriate? In any event, as per the usual wrong-headed-woman trope, Kate finally falls in love with Rocky and agrees to marry him. Rocky is killed by a gangster later in the movie, but Kate tells her mother that even though her worst fears were realized, she was still wrong-headed about not wanting to date cops, because otherwise she might have met Rocky earlier, and they could have had a few years of being happily married anyway.
Then, to really cap things off, when Dan admits he was wrong about the gangster's girlfriend at the end of the movie, Kate puts her arm through his and they walk off together, giving us just a hint that they might end up getting married eventually, which is pushing it, since Rocky was only recently killed.
Well, enough of that. I said earlier that the outrageous sexism in this movie is the only notable thing about it. That is not quite true. Clint Eastwood once said that before Sergio Leone made "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), movies never showed the person shooting and the person being shot in the same frame. He was wrong about that, there being several movies before 1964 in which shootings were filmed that way. This movie is one of them, there being two such scenes, one near the beginning and one near the end.
In a way, the sexism of this movie is the only thing remarkable about it. Otherwise, it is a routine story about a couple of cops taking on some mobsters, about which little needs to be said. And as for the sexism, I am not referring to the difference between the two cops regarding women who associate with hoodlums. Dan thinks they are no good and hates them, while Rocky believes that some of them are just frails, basically good girls who have been led astray. At the end of the movie, when a gangster's ex-girlfriend takes a bullet to keep Dan from being killed, he realizes he was wrong and that his deceased partner was right. That aspect of the movie was the best part.
It is the interaction between the two cops and Kate, who works for the police as a radio communicator. When they finally meet her, both men take a fancy to her and ask her to go to dinner with both of them, which must have seemed just as odd when this movie was made in 1950 as it does today. She declines their invitation, saying she has to work late, but they keep pressuring her. What they are doing borders on sexual harassment by today's standards, but by old-movie standards, she is wrong-headed for not going out with them, and they are right to keep pushing her. It is all supposed to be cute, but it is a little cringe-worthy.
But it gets worse. At the end of the evening, she tells them she has no intention of going out with either of them again, because she does not want to become involved with a policeman. Her father was a cop, and she saw how her mother worried he would be killed, and eventually he was. But her mother does not respect her opinion, and the two cops do not take "No" for an answer, so the mother rents the other half of the duplex she and Kate live in to the policemen, her mother's way of playing cupid. And as they move in, they purposely make lots of noise, singing and hammering, until Kate goes to see what is going on.
I know that the scene is played for laughs, but not only did I not laugh, it was at this point that my ability to make allowances for old movies gave way to sheer revulsion. Could it really be that audiences in 1950 approved of this behavior on the part of the mother and the two cops, and thought that what they did was appropriate? In any event, as per the usual wrong-headed-woman trope, Kate finally falls in love with Rocky and agrees to marry him. Rocky is killed by a gangster later in the movie, but Kate tells her mother that even though her worst fears were realized, she was still wrong-headed about not wanting to date cops, because otherwise she might have met Rocky earlier, and they could have had a few years of being happily married anyway.
Then, to really cap things off, when Dan admits he was wrong about the gangster's girlfriend at the end of the movie, Kate puts her arm through his and they walk off together, giving us just a hint that they might end up getting married eventually, which is pushing it, since Rocky was only recently killed.
Well, enough of that. I said earlier that the outrageous sexism in this movie is the only notable thing about it. That is not quite true. Clint Eastwood once said that before Sergio Leone made "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), movies never showed the person shooting and the person being shot in the same frame. He was wrong about that, there being several movies before 1964 in which shootings were filmed that way. This movie is one of them, there being two such scenes, one near the beginning and one near the end.