Review of The Greene Murder Case

While the painfully slow pacing of the first scenes does speed up a little, it never gets to the point where it moves at a regular flow. This Philo Vance murder mystery mention the previous case, the canary, which had actually mentioned this one! That film has the scene where William Powell encounters Eugene Pallette who says he hasn't seen him since the Greene murder case. Perhaps it was meant for a little advertising for this film, but then Jean Arthur mentions reading about the canary murder case in the newspaper, ironically having played another role in it! This film focuses on an eccentric family living in a large mansion, they must stay in for a certain theory of time and the series of deaths that leads to Powell and Pallette working together for the first time.

The problem with the film is the pacing as it moves very slowly, even though the screenplay is rather intelligent. Other members of the family includes bedridden matriarch Gertrude Norman, Arthur's sister Florence Eldridge and Morgan Farley. There's also frightened servants including one who emotes overly dramatically like she was Sarah Bernhardt playing Hedda Gabler and another one who quits in fury after bashing every one of her employers. A few scenes are filled with some great tension so it's not a complete fiasco, most notably one with someone hanging onto a ledge over an ice covered body of water beneath the house. Fortunately shorter than its predecessor.