Scotland Yard Investigator
                              
Director: George Blair
Year: 1945
Rating: 5.5
This is at best an average film from Republic, but it is of interest for its two leads. C. Aubrey Smith is the lead here which delighted me. He is one of my favorite English character actors, usually cast as an upper-class Englishman and often military man with his thick moustache and manner of speech. The reason that he is always elderly in his films is that he was 50 when he made his first one in 1915. So, by the time we see him in his later films that he is best known for, he has to be about 70. The other surprising member in the cast is Erich von Stroheim. Things must have been going badly for him to appear in this B film. His appearance though is disappointing. I barely could recognize him in a hairpiece, only a slight accent and no monocle. He still is the villain though which he was in nearly every film. One of the great silent film directors whose arrogance and costly spending led to his downfall. He was called The Man You Love to Hate.

 

Smith is head of security for the British Museum. The war has just ended and paintings that were given to them for safekeeping in nations overrun by Germany are being shipped back home. One of them being the Mona Lisa. There is no truth to this. The story of how France hid the Mona Lisa and many other art works is a fascinating one of moving them around the country to keep them from the Nazis who stole thousands of valuable paintings, sculptures and other art works. The film The Monuments Men is a terrific film depicting a group of Americans hunting down all the stolen art.

 

Two men pretending to be from the Louve come to retrieve the painting - in fact they work for an art lover played by Von Stroheim - who has a lovely collection of stolen paintings. It turns out to be a fake and he indignantly returns it to Smith! Where he asks is the real one. Smith has no clue and it becomes a race to see who can find it first. A few of the actors return who were in Secrets of Scotland Yard - Smith, his granddaughter played by Stephanie Bachelor and Forrester Harvey playing a crooked antiques dealer. George Blair directed both films. Decent enough film with a few surprising murders.