This turned out to be a nifty little flick. Not too surprising, since Leatrice Fountain's book on Gilbert said it was popular with both critics and audiences, though not with big enough audiences to help Gilbert much, since attendance was way down after the Crash.
Based on a novel ("Cheri-Bibi") by Gaston Leroux, the author of "The Phantom of the Opera," it concerns a celebrated escape artist who is framed for the murder of his beloved's father by the man who intends to marry her for her money. Later on, having escaped from prison, he tries to clear himself by impersonating (with the help of plastic surgery) the real killer.
Gilbert is very good indeed, and the far-fetched story goes down easily. There is a certain continental formality to the goings-on, and he gets to be most debonair. It's surprisingly easy to accept that everybody else buys the impersonation, since Gilbert is quite good at mimicking the carriage and mannerisms of Ian Keith, who plays the real Marquis Du Touchais in the early scenes.
Leila Hyams is a lovely girl and a competent actress, but she's one of those actresses of the period (like Ann Harding) who are always perfect ladies and don't haunt the memory much. What Hyams is able to do, however, in both this and "Way for a Sailor," is seem worth it. She's the kind of intelligent, modest, upright and attractive woman a man would go to lengths to make his wife.
And she benefits a lot from the decision to use Rene Hubert as the costumer. The gowns and furs and hats in this movie are the very last word in chic, and several of them were probably talked about quite a lot by women who saw the film. One jacket Hyams wears has a narrow ermine collar and huge, turned-back ermine cuffs lined with sable and trailing sable tassels. A supporting character wears another two-toned fur later on.
Players like Lewis Stone (as a principled but sympathetic detective nemesis) and C. Aubrey Smith (as the murdered man) don't disappoint either.
This is literally a dark film, rarely going outdoors and almost never in sunlight. There's a great deal of evocative chiaroscuro used to further the Gothic mood.
The director John S. Robertson was unfamiliar to me. He turns out to have had a much longer career in silents (he directed his last sound film in 1935), but he's perfectly competent in the talkies medium. The dialogue is by Edwin Justus Mayer, and there's just the right amount of it.
Robertson has some excellent credits, including directing Pickford in "Tess of the Storm Country," Garbo in "The Single Standard" and John Barrymore in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
Nobody ever mentions a "phantom of Paris" in the movie (though Cheri-Bibi does elude the law very effectively most of the time). The title was undoubtedly to call attention to the fact that the author of the story was Leroux.
Based on a novel ("Cheri-Bibi") by Gaston Leroux, the author of "The Phantom of the Opera," it concerns a celebrated escape artist who is framed for the murder of his beloved's father by the man who intends to marry her for her money. Later on, having escaped from prison, he tries to clear himself by impersonating (with the help of plastic surgery) the real killer.
Gilbert is very good indeed, and the far-fetched story goes down easily. There is a certain continental formality to the goings-on, and he gets to be most debonair. It's surprisingly easy to accept that everybody else buys the impersonation, since Gilbert is quite good at mimicking the carriage and mannerisms of Ian Keith, who plays the real Marquis Du Touchais in the early scenes.
Leila Hyams is a lovely girl and a competent actress, but she's one of those actresses of the period (like Ann Harding) who are always perfect ladies and don't haunt the memory much. What Hyams is able to do, however, in both this and "Way for a Sailor," is seem worth it. She's the kind of intelligent, modest, upright and attractive woman a man would go to lengths to make his wife.
And she benefits a lot from the decision to use Rene Hubert as the costumer. The gowns and furs and hats in this movie are the very last word in chic, and several of them were probably talked about quite a lot by women who saw the film. One jacket Hyams wears has a narrow ermine collar and huge, turned-back ermine cuffs lined with sable and trailing sable tassels. A supporting character wears another two-toned fur later on.
Players like Lewis Stone (as a principled but sympathetic detective nemesis) and C. Aubrey Smith (as the murdered man) don't disappoint either.
This is literally a dark film, rarely going outdoors and almost never in sunlight. There's a great deal of evocative chiaroscuro used to further the Gothic mood.
The director John S. Robertson was unfamiliar to me. He turns out to have had a much longer career in silents (he directed his last sound film in 1935), but he's perfectly competent in the talkies medium. The dialogue is by Edwin Justus Mayer, and there's just the right amount of it.
Robertson has some excellent credits, including directing Pickford in "Tess of the Storm Country," Garbo in "The Single Standard" and John Barrymore in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
Nobody ever mentions a "phantom of Paris" in the movie (though Cheri-Bibi does elude the law very effectively most of the time). The title was undoubtedly to call attention to the fact that the author of the story was Leroux.
