Fans of pre-Code feature films will enjoy this forgotten 1933 gem made in twenty-three days, brilliantly directed by the world's most underestimated director, Michael Curtiz, for Warner Bros when young Daryl Zanuck ran the studio and Hal Wallis assisted him. The film, lasting a little more than an hour, is packed with mystery, comedy, and romance, all thrown together helter-skelter and moved along at a rapid pace whose only purpose is to entertain. William Powell, as to be expected, is his usual impeccable self as the charming detective with integrity who ends up helping beautiful Margaret Lindsay, a society damsel in distress. As those were the days when all well-born people in films spoke with English accents, Margaret's is particularly thick. Ruth Donnelly plays the opposite: a working-class secretary who gets the laughs. There is a mystery plot, of course, that makes more sense than most. It's peopled with any number of sleazy lower-class villains, one of whom is referred to as a "snowbird" in the days before the word meant someone spending his winters in Florida or New Mexico. A most enjoyable film made when movies were movies.
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