FROM HEADQUARTERS

Exceptionally fun programmer from Pre-Code Depression Era Warner Bros., a murder mystery/police procedural that’s a paradigm of the form (especially the first two reels), positively loaded with pace and moxie.  After a score of films in the States since 1931, UFA actor-turned-director William Dieterle is still eager to show off his acquired Hollywood DNA in intertwined camera moves, smooth transitions and overhead shots for clarity & punctuation on what easily could have been a throwaway assignment.  Here, a Big City montage takes us thru documentary-style police arrests & formalities from analogue days, including a super cool look at an early IBM punch-card sorter.  Meanwhile, the main case is coming into focus as lead detective George Brent* and his team (Eugene Pallette, Henry O’Neill, Edward Ellis) figure out the latest tabloid sensation (note the baying news-hounds in the Press Room) was no suicide, but murder.  Murder with dueling pistols in a luxe penthouse.  Worse, Brent’s ex, a typically underwhelming Margaret Lindsay, is a prime suspect.  Or was it her brother, quick to defend her honor?  Could it have been the victim’s disapproving valet?  That new, shady business partner?  (He is European!)  Maybe it was the recidivist lock-picker who retrieved papers from the dead man’s safe.  So many suspects, each with a wildly subjective P.O.V. flashback for us to see.  (Lindsay’s shows her being sexually harassed from her own POV.  How’d they shoot that?)  Things slow down a bit in reels four & five to let  Brent get us all up to speed before we jump back to Express Tempo for the loop-de-loop whodunit denouement.  This was the kind of film you’d walk in right in the middle, then stay (thru the feature, newsreel, trailers, short subject, cartoon) till you noticed, ‘This is where I came in!’  But better hurry, it only got booked for a split-week.  Lucky us, we can catch it any time.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For an A-list example of this type of snappy Warner Bros. product, try Cagney & Davis in JIMMY THE GENT/’34.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/06/jimmy-gent-1934.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Solid, handsome, always a little dull at his home studio, Brent came alive when on loan.  But here, at his youngest and leanest, he’s a charmer.