The Case of the Curious Bride is a programmer with Warren William, the sleek and often villainous unsung (by now) star of the golden period of Warner Bros. – the studio’s answer to John Barrymore – as Perry Mason. It’s a genre film that gives a spe­cial angle to each of its genre elements, and an enormous sense of movement. Every scene, whether in the street, in shops, restaurants, or even prison, is alive and even full of sound and fury, starting from the essential, typical elements of the milieu. To be noted especially is the element of black humor, vital to the usual role of the disenchanted newspaperman played by Lee Tracy: we get a stylish, amusing figure of a coro- ner, with autopsy generating a full quota of jokes, especially of the gastronomical type! Equally “noir” is the vision of society, the gentlemen of the press, officials, and financial circles, with Proudhon’s royal idea everywhere in evidence: all property is theft. The film has the flair and vitality of a Feuillade serial, and its development of the mystery and the whodunit structure – a favorite in literature which is notoriously difficult to manage in films – is quite wonderful.

Peter von Bagh