Midnight (1930) is a weird, jazzy cat trip with some baggage

If you have six minutes and a high tolerance for odd history, you might want to sit through Midnight. It’s not exactly a 'good' time, but it's a time. 🐈

It’s for people who like seeing how animation looked before Disney cleaned everything up. If you hate old-timey 'yikes' moments, you should probably skip this one entirely.

The whole thing is part of the Aesop's Fables series. But don't look for a moral lesson here because there isn't one.

It starts with a bunch of cats just... existing in the dark. The atmosphere is actually kind of spooky at first with all the black and white shadows.

The animation is that classic rubber-hose style. Characters don't have bones; they just bend and stretch like they're made of wet noodles.

I love the way the cats move. It’s so fluid and weirdly hypnotic to watch them dance across the screen.

There’s a cat playing the piano and his arms stretch about four feet long. It’s unsettling but I couldn't stop looking at it.

The music is the best part. It’s that scratchy, tinny jazz that feels like it’s coming out of a dusty old gramophone in a basement.

But then the movie hits a wall. A really ugly wall.

A cat appears in blackface, and it’s a total racial stereotype that just kills the mood instantly. It’s a reminder that 1930 was a very different, often worse, time for entertainment.

It reminded me of the awkward feeling I got watching Trying to Get Along. Some of these old shorts just have so much baggage attached to them.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Midnight (1930) through its definitive frames.

I noticed a small detail in the background where a window just disappears for a second. It’s like the animator just forgot to draw it in that frame.

I like those little mistakes. It makes it feel like real people were sweating over these drawings in a hot room somewhere.

There’s a scene with a cat and a milk bottle that goes on way too long. It’s not funny, it’s just... there.

The pacing is all over the place. It’s not tight like A Close Shave or anything modern.

Sometimes the cats just freeze for a second. It feels like the movie is stuttering even when the film strip is fine.

John Foster and Mannie Davis clearly just wanted to pack as many gags as possible into six minutes. Most of them don't land, but the ones that do are surreal.

One cat gets hit with a shoe and it just sort of deflates. It’s genuinely funny in a dark way.

The ending is incredibly abrupt. It just stops, like they ran out of money or someone turned the lights off in the studio.

It’s a messy little piece of history. 🎥

It lacks the heart of something like No Man's Land, obviously. It’s just a product of its time, for better and mostly for worse.

Watch it if you’re a completionist for 1930s animation. Otherwise, you aren't missing much besides a headache and some cringe-worthy moments.

Random notes from my notebook:

• The way the cat's eyes glow in the dark is actually pretty cool.
• Why does every cat have the same face? It gets confusing.
• The piano music is way better than the actual cartoon.
• That stereotype cat... seriously, yikes.
• I swear I saw a mouse in the corner that didn't move for three scenes.

It's a weird artifact. Not a masterpiece, just a strange little ghost of a movie. 👻