Tonight's Movie: The Canary Murder Case (1929) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Last week Kino Lorber released the three-film, one-disc Blu-ray Philo Vance Collection.

All three movies are Paramount Pictures films starring William Powell as the great detective, Philo Vance. The titles in the set are THE CANARY MURDER CASE (1929), THE GREEN MURDER CASE (1929), and THE BENSON MURDER CASE (1930).

To my knowledge this is the first time these Philo Vance films have had a release for home viewing. The Warner Archive Collection previously released a six-film Philo Vance DVD set, but all of the movies in that collection are different; they include Powell in his fourth and final Philo Vance film, THE KENNEL MURDER CASE (1933), which was a Warner Bros. release.

In THE CANARY MURDER CASE Powell's detective is solving the mystery of the death of showgirl Margaret O'Dell, aka "The Canary" (Louise Brooks).

The Canary is blackmailing several men in her life, so there are any number of suspects, including young Jimmy Spottswoode (James Hall), who had a brief dalliance with the Canary but has returned to his true love, Alice (Jean Arthur).

Powell is said to have disliked making the Philo Vance films, as unlike all the other characters, the detective is mostly seen lost in thought, but Powell is the perfect person to put this story over.

After the murder takes place, the film is fairly talky, and Powell does indeed spent time in deep thought, but he's such a compelling actor he keeps things interesting. He has extended moments towards the end laying out his theory of the case, and while doing so one also feels his regret at the identity of the murderer.

Brooks has a unique, showy manner as the murder victim. I'm not sure I'd say she's believable, but she's memorable.

While researching the series I learned that this film was originally intended as a silent, and when Brooks was asked to dub dialogue she refused. If IMDb is correct, she was dubbed and in some scenes doubled by Margaret Livingston.

Jean Arthur has very little to do as the "good" girl of the piece, appearing in just a handful of scenes, but it's fun to see her very early in her career.

Eugene Pallette and Ned Sparks liven things up a bit, and E.H. Calvert plays Vance's friend, District Attorney Markham.

The movie was directed by Malcolm St. Clair and the uncredited Frank Tuttle, who directed each of the next two films. It was shot by Harry Fischbeck and the uncredited Cliff Blackstone.

Perhaps my favorite costume designer, Travis Banton, designed the film's costumes.

The print is a new 4K restoration, and given the film's age I have to say I was impressed with both the picture and sound quality. It's a good-looking print

This case comes with a nice cardboard slipcover. Disc extras consist of a commentary track by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, plus three trailers for other films available from Kino Lorber.

The other two films in the set have commentary tracks as well, with Newman and Forshaw also handling THE GREENE MURDER CASE while Jason A. Ney does the commentary for THE BENSON MURDER CASE.

I'll be reviewing the other two films in this set at a future date.  (Update: Here are my reviews of THE GREENE MURDER CASE and THE BENSON MURDER CASE.)

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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