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"Now, let's see. Where did I put that... Ah, here it is: Unsolved Murders." Philo Vance (William Powell) enters his terrier in the Long Island Kennel Club's show and cancels his vacation to investigate a mysterious death, thus the dapper joke on bloodhounds. The victim is a financier and aesthete (Robert Barratt), the camera peeks into the keyhole of his locked room to reveal the slumped figure with a bullet in his head. Plenty of suspects, the niece (Mary Astor) and boyfriend (Paul Cavanagh), the blonde neighbor (Helen Vinson) and the gigolo (Jack La Rue), the secretary (Ralph Morgan) and the butler (Arthur Hohl) and the cook (James Lee). The dead man's brother (Frank Conroy) is a corpse tumbling out of the closet. "We have all the pieces of the puzzle, but none of them seems to fit." Quite the snazzy whodunit, replete with the staccato Michael Curtiz élan. (Whip-pan transitions, mirror shots, a subjective POV for the investigator's visualization of the crime.) Overlapping killers, the blood-stained poker and the dagger in the shattered porcelain vase. "What happened?" "I don't know, dear. Somebody stabbed me." Powell's inquisitive elegance as "the world's champion troubleshooter" is a dry run for Nick Charles, Eugene Pallette's croaking buoyancy as the police sergeant is his Nora. Adroit maquette work points up the junction with Trouble in Paradise, the irritable coroner (Etienne Girardot) and Figaro the Doberman have their parts to play. "Gentlemen, the mist is beginning to rise." Clair's And Then There Were None indicates a close stylistic study. With Robert McWade, Wade Boteler, and George Chandler. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |