Trent's Last Case
Director: Herbert Wilcox
Year: 1952
Rating: 7.0
This film feels very British from beginning to end - not just the accents
and stars mind you but the attitudes, the atmosphere, the dialogue just reeks
of being English. It has that Hitchcock vibe before he went to Hollywood
and in fact stars Margaret Lockwood who was in The Lady Vanishes some fourteen
years previously but looks quite the same. She never made it very big in
the USA and I don't know if she ever tried but she was very much a star in
England especially with her Gainsborough films of the 1940's. Her co-star
here playing Trent is also as British as bad pub food Michael Wilding who
has a sort of Michael Redgrave understated come on boys persona in this film.
He was an artist more than an actor and at one time said he was the worst
actor ever - not true at all - but his biggest accomplishment I would guess
was being one of Elizabeth Taylor's many spouses. I expect the sketches in
the film are really his.
The film plot goes like this - an American millionaire (played by of all
people Orson Welles with a large nose piece giving him an evil look) is thought
to have committed suicide and the journalist Trent who is famous for uncovering
murders previously is sent to do the story and see if there is more behind
the story. He thinks he has solved the case and fallen in love with the wife
and then the twists begin. Good film.
It is based on the 1913 book from E.C. Bentley and in the canon of mysteries
it is considered one of the first true ones - though I admit I am not sure
why since we had Sherlock Holmes and others already - but this is what they
say. I read it the other day - $1 on Kindle - and though awfully wordy at
times as Trent can go on forever in his speeches - it feels very modern and
clever. What is disappointing was that with all the references to previous
cases I was hoping to find a series of Trent books but that was not to be.
Bentley was not a mystery writer at all - more a poet - and he wrote only
one more Trent novel and some short stories decades later. Those are about
$9 on Kindle.
There were two other films based on the book - one in 1920 and the other
in 1929 directed by none other than Howard Hawks. It was produced just as
films were moving into sound and this was a bit of a throwaway as it was
still shot as a silent and though lost for some 40 years was rediscovered
- much to Hawk's chagrin. He considered it his worst film and at a festival
honoring him tried to get it burnt!
What is odd about all three films is that the millionaire's death is considered
a suicide initially but in the book that never is a possibility since there
is no gun around the dead man. Otherwise though there are some misguided
- in my opinion - changes from the book but the plot line and the mystery
itself sticks pretty close to Bentley.
