Guilty Hands

I always say "never underestimate a movie made in the 1930s" and this is a key example. Even though we see who commits the murder, it has the flavor of a well done who-done-it. Sumptuous sets, great costumes, the proverbial dark and stormy night -- all set a wonderful mood. The camera work sustains it, but above all, the excellent acting by Lionel Barrymore and Kay Francis make for a suspenseful thriller.

I had heard of Kay Francis, but I don't recall having seen her in anything. She is fantastic! Barrymore is best known these days for playing the heavy in "It's a Wonderful Life", but here he is quite a bit younger, very spry, and marvelously expressive, both in inflection and mannerisms.

I wouldn't dream of giving away the ending, which has two nice touches, but I'm proud to say I saw it coming - about thirty seconds before the climax. I was thinking, "wait, they couldn't possibly ..., not the ... " but it was. Superb! Highly recommended.

• henry

District attorney Lionel Barrymore is angered when old friend Alan Mowbray says he plans to marry Barrymore's daughter Madge Evans. He tells Mowbray (in a surprisingly funny scene) that he will kill him if he tries to go through with the wedding and he can get away with it because he knows so much about murder. Well, Mowbray goes ahead and announces the engagement and, sure enough, Papa Lionel kills him. The question now is will he get away with it or will Mowbray's longtime lover Kay Francis figure him out?

Very nice direction and a particularly lively performance from Barrymore. Mowbray is only in the film for a brief time but he's sufficiently scuzzy to make you root for Lionel to get away with offing him. Kay Francis is good in her typically melodramatic fashion. The great C. Aubrey Smith is largely wasted in a minor role. Beautiful Madge Evans plays her part as well as can be expected given that the script makes her out to be a little bit of an airhead and a tease. She kisses her father on the mouth a lot and not just pecks either, which I found odd. But I've seen similar things in other films from the period so I'll just chalk that up to different sensibilities today. It's a good movie with an interesting twist at the end that some will probably see as a cop-out.

Lionel Barrymore is a former district attorney and now a successful defense attorney, with some vague theories about justifiable homicide. He finds he has to put them into practice when his daughter, Madge Evans, tells him she is going to marry one of his clients, whom he knows to be a bad man.

Barrymore co-directed this with W. S. Van Dyke. Between the two of them, it makes for good performances and a story that moves right along. A fine cast helps, including Kay Francis, Polly Moran and the always enjoyable C. Aubrey Smith. It's the sort of thoughtful movie that could not be made once the Production Code began to be seriously enforced.

The opening sequence is stylish, unusual, disorienting. We don't know where we are or what is going on for a few minutes, and that reflects the film's morally disorienting territory. The premise is excellent. Barrymore is not "hammy" but commanding in a very natural way; he's playing a successful lawyer who is used to declaiming his arguments for an audience. The script employs daring ambiguities: we partly want to see the rich man murdered and Barrymore get away with it, yet Barrymore is clearly not a moral character himself, and the woman who insists upon justice for the man she loved is a "tramp" mistress who would have been willing to carry on her affair with the scoundrel after his marriage. What a crew! The magnetism of Barrymore and Francis in their moral contradictions keeps us riveted even through the parts that are like any other old-dark-house mystery. The ending is both preposterous and brilliant. You can look back and see how they set it up, yet it's very difficult to predict!

Pretty good murder story in a pre-code kind of way. Lionel Barrymore plays the local legal-eagle, as well as the irate father of the soon-to-be-bride, his daughter intending to marry his old friend, the biggest cad he knows. He tells the fellow he will murder him-justifiably in his mind-if won't give her up, and we see him do so. He even has arranged witnesses to "prove" he could not be the murderer, but the dead man's longtime love, played by a lovely Kay Francis, suspects him from the start.(Her scene at his body is not her best, however.) She then discovers the imprint on a piece of paper of a note the dead man had written before he was murdered, showing that Lionel had threatened to murder him. Of course Lionel is right there when she finds it, and explains in lawlerly detail how she will appear in a trial, since she is the beneficiary of the will.

So will Lionel be caught for his misdeed? Or is the one of the pre-codes when murderers do not have to pay for their crime? Lionel Barrymore gives his usual strong, if sometimes over-the-top, performance. Kay plays well in a major supporting role. The rest of the cast is adequate in their roles, but the film is mostly between Lionel and Kay.