THE BISHOP MURDER CASE(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / 1929)
BRILLIANT-- and FUN!Several studios competed to buy up rights to S.S. Van Dyne's
Philo Vance novels in the late 1920s, which were immensely-popular. As a result, 3 Vance films were released in 1929 alone, from 2 different studios-- Paramount & MGM-- and with 2 different sets of actors playing the same regular cast: Philo Vance, District Attourney Markham, Sgt. Ernest Heath, and Dr. Van Pelt, the coroner who's always annoyed his mealtime is interrupted by having to see murder victims.
This is the 3rd film released, the 1st I haven't seen before, and oddly, the 4th one on the
OnesMedia box set. I'm not sure it matters, but I decided to watch them in release order rather than box set order, just to see if it made any difference. I found it amusing that early in the film, someone mentioned "
The Greene Murder Case", which had come out just 4-1/2 months earlier, from a DIFFERENT studio!
There's been so many instances of film series with different actors, or from various different studios, and even 2 or more versions of the same story filmed at the same time. But this one somehow really flipped me out. The 4 regulars are so recognizably the same characters (despite only Sgt. Heath having even a vague physical resemblence to the other actor who played him), but the ENTIRE FILM has a drastically-different look and feel and AURA about it. This is MGM, after all, the top-of-the-line studio with the most money to spend. Right from the start, it looks like a MUCH-bigger budgeted film than the ones from Paramount, and I'd swear there's a lot of matte paintings being employed, to widen the visual scope of Manhattan and the balcony of Vance's plush apartment.
Remembering this is still just barely one half-step away from the silent era, some of the camera-work, while static, reminded me of the style I'd seen in Fritz Lang's "
METROPOLIS"-- there's a comparison I never thought I'd see in a murder mystery. But these are interspersed with moments of very advanced, "artsy" camera shots, suggesting to me the cameraman was trying wherever he could to break out of the "filmed stage play" style of most of the picture.
I'm only really familiar with two actors in this. The first, of course, is
BASIL RATHBONE, who I have never seen this young before! While I suspect William Powell will always be my idea of the "classic" version of Philo Vance, Rathbone in his way is SO DAMNED GOOD in this, I find myself dearly wishing he'd done more than just this one film. MGM returned to Vance in 1935 and 1936, but between them, their 3 Vance film starred 3 DIFFERENT actors. WTF?
A funny detail is that several times in the story, one of the other characters jokingly refers to him and D.A. Markham as "
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson"-- TEN YEARS before Rathbone played Holmes in "
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES". In fact, in one scene, Vance describes exactly what Sgt. Heath did the night before, based entirely on the condition of Heath's face, finger, lapel & handkerchief.
Roland Young plays Sigurd Arnesson, one of the chief suspects. He's so charming, clever, and aggressively helpful, you can't help thinking he's the prototype
COLUMBO murderer! But, is he the guilty one? You have to wait until the very end of the film to find out! I've seen Young in a few things, but his real stand-out performance was as the private eye in "
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE" (1945), who figured out the identity of the murderer-- seconds before being crushed to death by falling bricks.
Clarence Gelbert is D.A. Markham. Not much to say about him, except he doesn't stand out as well as E.H. Calvert or Robert McWade did in the Paramount or Warner Bros. films.
James Donlan as the thick-skulled Sgt. Ernest Heath is another matter though. Slightly less jovial and more serious than Eugene Pallette (who played Heath in 5 films, more times than anyone played Vance!), he probably has the most physical resemblence to him, while also reminding me a bit of Edward G. Robinson both in how he looks and how he talks. Turns out, I've seen him in a few things, often playing detectives. At one point, Vance says to Markham, "
All the same, he IS the best Sergeant you have on the force." I had to laugh-- was that a compliment-- or an insult?
Similar to "
THE GREENE MURDER CASE", "
BISHOP" involves a large house and a family being picked off one by one. The fact that the 2 stories play out so differently kept surprising me, the longer it went on. You have a use of "theme" murders, as well as a group of suspects being whittled down as they get killed off one by one. At one point, I toyed between 2 "obvious" suspects, but by the end, it turned out NEITHER of them was actually the killer!
There's a LOT of character humor and great lines in this, which kept me smiling and laughing all the way through what many these days would probably find hopelessly old, static & creaky. The fact that, unlike the first 2 films,
OnesMedia's copy of this was a
CRYSTAL-CLEAR print, really added to my enjoyment. Oh, if only someone could do decent restorations on "
CANARY" and "
GREENE"!! The way the ending played out, with its twists and dialogue, left me STUNNED. It's one thing to watch a very old movie and think, "
That was fun", or "
That was okay", but this one genuinely left me feeling, "
THAT was F***ING BRILLIANT!!" No kidding. What a great way to feel about a film from all the way back in
1929.
And I've still got most of the box set to go.
