Old-timey movie review: The Benson Murder Case

The more William Powell/Philo Vance movies I see, the more I appreciate Michael Curtiz's "The Kennel Murder Case". The rest are fairly amateur productions.

Once again William Powell is the detective, but he is not allowed to use any of the charm we'd see in "The Thin Man." It's another unlikely whodunnit with another unlikely solution.  The first act is people arguing with the ultimate murder victim to the point of threatening him with murder. He of course is murdered and Philo Vance figures it out.

The film gets points for the murder taking place in a lodge on a dark and stormy night. This never gets old.

The characters and scenes are pretty standard. It's the cinematography that baffles me though. In some of the office scenes the camera is so far back we can barely make out the characters, yet we can see how high the walls are on the set.

In other shots of the same office, the camera is overhead. What?! Once again, baffling! Maybe for an establishing, outdoor shot, but indoors! In a room with people? Just goofy.

Compare this camerawork, to the daring, dizzying cinematography in "Kennel Murder Case." Curtiz knew what he was doing.

Conversely, there isn't a single close-up in the entire film. All these great 30s character actors and we don't get to see any of them up close. I'm sure the close up had been invented then. Especially William Powell's expressive, handsome mug.

Check it out on YouTube, or if it ever turns up on TCM, but keep in mind, it's just a warm-up for Nick Charles.

Old timey movie review: "Lawyer Man"

This is another film in the Forbidden Hollywood series. I was expecting sex and nudity but instead got only big city corruption. Oh well.

William Powell starts out as a lawyer from the poor side of town, gets recruited by a law firm from the rich side of town, gets framed in a shady case, his new rich friends turn their back on him, he scrapes his way back to the top, gets recruited by the mob/city to be assistant DA where he bites the hand that feeds him by prosecuting one of their own. Then he gives a big speech (one of several) and goes back - with his long suffering secretary Joan Blondell - back to the poor side of town.

All this in slightly over an hour. And without a single courtroom scene.

Let's think about this for a second. The film is called "Lawyer Man," (a terrible title), the film centers on 2 or 3 important trials, William Powell gives 2 or 3 long speeches...and none of this happens in a court room! There's some forced comedy about an Italian immigrant trying to talk his way into the courtroom for an important case, but the guard won't let him, nor the audience inside.

Imagine what Sydney Lumet and Al Pacino could do with this.

Powell gets his revenge on those who wronged him, but we never see it. It would dull the enjoyment of any revenge movie.


Warner Bros. is treading Dashiell Hammett territory, the movie looks like the Cliffs Notes version of "The Glass Key." There's lots of big city corruption, but unlike the protagonist in "The Glass Key," William Powell is never in any danger.

Anything with Powell though is worth watching, it's just unusual to see him unable  to breathe little more motivation into this character.

Old-timey film review: The Canary Murder Case

Watch this 1929 Philo Vance Mystery and compare it to 1933's "The Kennel Murder Case" and you'll be amazed at how much film improved over 4 years. "Canary" is pretty static, the camera never moves, the acting is bad, and there's only one scene outside. In Kennel, the camera moves and swishes, a better line of actors come in and the dialogue moves better too.

Is it because the first was done at Paramount as a cheapie, and the other for Warner Bros.? "Kennel" was directed by Michael Curtiz, who would later direct "Casablanca" and a ton of other classics for Warners. Was it simply because he was a more gifted director?

Either way, "Canary" has 'early talky' all over it. Hollywood still didn't know how to overdub, so no music, and a scene in a crowded theater becomes comical when you hear only ten people clapping when you should hear thousands.

Maltin says this was originally filmed as a silent, then scenes were reshot and dialogue dubbed to make it a talky. This is really obvious. Further, the print I watched on YouTube was terrible, hopefully there's a restored DVD out there. Also, "Singing in the Rain" would have you believe that some actors from the silents never made it to the talkies because their voices were shrill. No, after watching this film it's obvious they didn't make it because they just couldn't act.

The plot: We meet the soon-to-be murder victim, a shrewd showgirl nicknamed "The Canary." She spends the first ten minutes of the film on the phone shaking down would-be murder suspects. She calls like a half-dozen guys, and you can't help but think of that season of "Dallas" where every conversation with JR ended with someone gritting his/her teeth and saying, "I'm going to kill that JR!" (A less cost-conscious film would have her shake them down in person, but that would have cost thousands in new sets, and days of shooting).

After she's murdered, all the suspects are taken in to the police headquarters where a detective interviews them one at a time at the detective's desk.. without legal representation. Think of any episode of "Law and Order" where the detectives interview the suspects in their houses and people walk around a little. It gets a little claustrophobic here.

Then Philo Vance plays poker with the suspects and determines who the killer is not by some slip of the tongue in the course of the game, but through how each suspect plays poker!

He could do this with every case.

Like "Kennel," the murder and solving the murder are preposterous. I have to read the books to see how much was carried over. Unlike "Kennel" William Powell lacks the charm and charisma he'd develop later, especially in the "Thin Man" films.

(A misstep in an otherwise well-intentioned film: A hotel clerk is a stammering negro used for comic effect. Not blatantly racist, but neither is it a proud moment for blacks in cinema.)

So, certainly worth watching as a curiosity. It can't be unnoticed that the whodunnit structure is there. We meet the characters and the detective, the soon-to-be victim pisses everyone off, s/he is murdered in a seemingly foolproof manner, and the detective talks to each suspect until someone slips, then the detective finds the apparatus, or method to how the murder was committed. It applies to a 1929 Philo Vance mystery, any episode of "Murder She Wrote," or "Law and Order."

What makes them watchable is the detective really. William Powell and Myrna Loy in the "Thin Man," Peter Falk in "Columbo," Hugh Lurie in "House." If you don't find the detective interesting, forget it, it's never going to work. William Powell was just getting up to speed.

Review: Thin Man TV series

The boxed set of the "Thin Man" films contains an episode of the late '50s TV version with Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk playing Nick and Nora Charles. Based on that and the clips available on YouTube, here's some thoughts.

Bad:

Too short: If we learned anything from Jessica Fletcher, it's that you need an hour to make a proper whodunnit. Columbo only had one suspect and his show was two hours! This show would have a half dozen suspects all crammed into 30 minutes. Let's get to know these people.

Phyllis Kirk: She wasn't playing Myrna Loy, she was playing Lucy Ricardo, and it sucked. In the book and films Nora didn't know about detective work, but no way was she stupid. She knew her way around men, the city and its bars. She was fascinated by Nick's past life as a detective and always wanted to know more. The TV show portrayed her as a half-wit accidentally handcuffing herself, or getting entangled in police tape, always reliant on Nick to bail her out. Dreadful!

Greenwich Village: Why in the world would this rich couple live in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village? Their home base was San Francisco, among high society. This is what made the contrast with Nick's rough-and-tumble past so enjoyable.

Good:

Peter Lawford as Nick. He didn't take the subtle comic approach of William Powell, but he made up for it with cool. There's a scene in the episode in the box set where he's interviewing a suspect and half way through the interview he takes out, and lights up a cigarette. You could tell this wasn't in the script, Peter Lawford just needed a cigarette at that moment.

With Lawford's super cool and good looks, an hour length, a San Francisco setting, and a better Nora (Julie Newmar springs to mind), instead of being a forgotten footnote to Thin Man lore, this could have been a series that ran in reruns well into the 60s and 70s.

An update:

The antenna station GetTV has been showing all of the episodes of this show lately, and having seen several more episodes, I can't say my review of the one episode was wrong in anyway. I still stand by my critique.

The only change I would make is: I was too easy on Phyllis Kirk. She's terrible, and every episode made me hate her more. The actress has passed away now, so I can safely say: She was scary looking! And she applied her lipstick with a paint roller. And she had no charm. It's so hard for me to believe they couldn't find an attractive 25 year old on the Broadway stage who could act. Phyllis Kirk was the best they could do? Crazy.

Film review: Jewel Robbery

William Powell is a dashing rogue jewelry thief bent on seducing and abducting bored baroness Kay Francis. When she tells him over dinner in his luxurious hideout that she wants to be forced to do things, he picks her up and throws her in bed, and at that moment I thought: I get it, it's a Harlequinn Romance ... Mommy Porn!

And it is. Look at the titles of most of the Kindle/Nook self-published books: The Billionaire's Mistress, The Billionaire's Secret Lover, Stuck on an Island with a Billionaire. Forgetting for a moment that the economy is in such a bad way that housewives are no longer interested in being whisked away by a lowly millionaire, all these books and Harlequin romances have one thing in common: Seduction at the hands of a Dashing Rogue! Women being forced to do things that deep down, they want to do.

This pre-code film gets some points for being racy. Francis is married after all, and some of the clothes she and her best friend wear are cut very low. It's kind of wasted though because both the actresses are disturbingly flat chested. It's like watching 12 year old girls at a pre-teen beauty dress-up pageant.

There's also some limp comedy around some peripheral characters getting giddy from smoking pot.

We'll see this plot in cinema again and again, the most obvious example being Hitchcock's "To Catch a Thief." Hitchcock had the right idea though, money was spent! Instead of a fake French Riviera, Hitchcock went to the real one. Whereas this film's Vienna is as phony as they come.

I also kept thinking of "The Thomas Crown Affair."

It starts with a lot of exposition about how bored Kay Francis is. Things pick up considerably when William Powell shows up, some 15 minutes into the film. And of course he's amazing as the dashing rogue.  It's all very short though, it needed a couple more heists perhaps, and a little more romance.

No "Thin Man" remake?

It's been reported that after the disappointing returns on "Dark Shadows," Warner Bros. will not be remaking "The Thin Man" with Johnny Depp.

I'm of mixed emotions. One on hand, it's a classic! Hollywood shouldn't remake classics! On the other hand, the film is 80 years old! Perhaps the statute of limitations has run out and it's time to see what modern Hollywood can bring to the classic. (Color for starters, then Johnny Depp).

We haven't heard the end of this though. It's too good a property to leave alone, and, let's face it,   it's the only film Hollywood hasn't remade  yet.

But who....George Clooney and Rachel Weisz?