With Easter coming up,I began looking for a film I could watch with my dad during the holiday. Checking the sales page of a DVD seller, I spotted a title, which from the details, sounded like it would be a crime, to miss a viewing of.

View on the film:

Clocking on to a playful intermission dissolving the faces of the suspects to the sound of a timer as the audience are invited to guess, director William Beaudine & Merrily We Go to Hell (1932-also reviewed) cinematographer David Abel brew a mysterious Pre-Code atmosphere of stylish long panning shots across the Brandt household towards the shimmering dress of Freda,which melts to stage-bound style wide-shots, as the murderer lurks in the shadows, waiting for the perfect time to make their next move.

Whilst the roots of the project remain visible, the screenplay by Florence Ryerson and Brian Marlow adapt Walter Maria Espe's play into a nifty crime mystery, via Dr. Emil's fears of his hypnotism skills setting off a chain reaction, resulting in a pre-crime interrogation, as Emil's requests the police help stop the crime from taking place.

Giving the viewer a minute to solve the case, the writers display a real sense of fairness, by placing each clue clearly on the table, until the murderer takes the gloves off, to reveal their motive.

Rushing to the cops to request help to stop him committing a crime, Jean Hersholt gives a wonderful performance as Emil, whose fear over his hypnotism leading to grave events is used by Hersholt to weigh down on Emil's shoulders, while alluring Wynne Gibson plays on the ambiguity of Freda always being on the look out for $$ signs, as the crime of the century is committed.

The crime of the century wasn't quite the crime of the century. It was a doozy, it was a mystery, but it was also solvable. When I think, "crime of the century," I think of a crime that was gotten away with.

The movie began with Dr. Emil Brandt (Jean Hersholt) pleading to detectives Riley (Robert Elliott) and Martin (David Landau) to lock him up. Why? Because he planned to commit murder for money. If the cops locked him up then he couldn't commit the murder.

He had hypnotized a man by the name of Philip Ames (Samuel S. Hinds) and commanded him to steal $100,000 and bring it back to him by 8:15 p.m. He was then going to kill Philip and take the $100,000 for himself. The killing part is why he wanted to be locked up. He couldn't trust himself not to kill Philip, but police don't make arrests for crimes that haven't happened.

It turns out that Dr. Brandt needed the money to appease his wife, Freda (Wynne Gibson). She was a gold digger and was going to double cross Dr. Brandt and run off with the money with her lover, Gilbert Reid (Gordon Westcott). She never got that chance because a fourth person (someone besides Freda, Gilbert, or Dr. Brandt) entered the house, killed Philip, and took the money. The main suspects were the three aforementioned with an outside chance of it being one of the detectives, or the newspaperman, Dan McKee (Stuart Erwin), or the help, or another man who was anonymous.

There was enough intrigue with the murder and the cast of characters that I stayed tuned in. $100,000 is enough for just about anyone to commit murder, so everybody was in play. There was very little focus on characters with the exception of establishing who they were and a small glimpse of what type of person they were, and that allowed the movie to stay focused on the murder and solving the murder. That's what I want from a murder mystery. I don't need to know a whole lot about each character except what's germane to the plot. "The Crime of the Century" kept everything crime-centric even if it wasn't "the crime of the century."

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