CHINATOWN AT MIDNIGHT

US, 1949, 69 minutes, Black-and-white.
Hurd Hatfield, Jacqueline de Witt, Tom Powers.
Directed by Seymour Friedman.

This film is brief, like an episode in a television series in subsequent decades. Nevertheless, it is well done and quite interesting.

It is also interesting for the audience to see detailed realistic footage of San Francisco and Chinatown in the late 1940s.

The audience knows the killer right from the beginning. He is played by Hurd Hatfield, who had portrayed Dorian Gray. He robs exotic Chinese art objects for a decorator friend who relies on him. She sends him back for a white jade statue and, while the son the dealer is wrapping it, he attempts to press the security buzzer and he is shot. The killer shoots his fiancee as she rings the police and he gives the message – with a Cantonese accent.

The film is like those of the late 1940s, The Naked City, semi-documentary and the presentation of crime, detection, times and places… The film shows the detail of the police work, always wearing suits and ties and hats.

The criminal organises his cover, but in losing his coat, the detectives track down its make, sales, where his trousers were pressed and they get his identity, going to his apartment, finding his Chinese language records and the artwork.

The criminal hides away, goes to his apartment in the guise of delivering a telegram but loses his tablets and has a malaria attack, posing as is doctor on the phone to get the tablets, the information going to the detectives, his being pursued, Chase over the rooftops and the final shootout.

1. Crime thriller? Police work and detection?

2. The semi-documentary style of the films of the time? The voice-over and the explanation of the police work? Seeing the police work? Times, dates and places? The personalities of the police, the repartee between them? The demands of their work?

3. Introduction to Clifford, meeting Lisa, the stolen box? Her being a designer, to Carmel, wanting the white jade statue? Clifford and his infatuation, his immediately going to the shop, getting the jade piece, the young man wrapping it, the alarm, his being shot, his fiancee, coming in, phoning the police, her being shot? Both dying?

4. Clifford, slipping away after phoning the police, his Cantonese accent and his records and studying languages? His apartment, the landlady? His illness, the malaria tablets?

5. The role of the police, assuming the criminal was Chinese because of his message? The interrogation of the neighbours, the father and the sadness of his son’s death? Pursuing the phone calls, the telephonist and her ability to identify the voice? The times of the phone calls?

6. The newspapers, Linda, being upset, challenging Clifford, his shooting her?

7. His taking the flat, quietly occupying it, in hiding?

8. The detailed work of the police, the detectives, the hard work, tracking down the coat, the makers, sellers, pressing trousers? The identity of the killer?

9. The device of the census-takers? The female officer and discovering Clifford? Phoning the police? His escaping from the apartment?

10. Disguised as delivering the telegram, his landlady, his getting away? Dropping his tablets? His malaria attack, the need for tablets, going to the pharmacist, his disguising himself as the
doctor, going for the prescription?

11. The pursuit, his being surrounded, the chase on the roof, the shooting? His death?

12. Solution of the case?