Quiet Please: Murder

A competent B-noir, with the interesting twist of being set in a library. George Sanders' erudite villain is an oily delight; otherwise it's a somewhat overwrought collection of hard-boiled detective film cliches.

A really good cast, consisting of George Sanders, Gail Patrick, Richard Denning, and Sidney Blackmer stumble through "Quiet, Please: Murder," a 1942 film produced by 20th Century Fox.

I unfortunately saw a very poor print of this with fuzzy sound, which naturally hampered my enjoyment. The plot concerns a rare book scam, headed by Jim Fleg (Sanders) and Myra Blandy (Patrick). Fleg steals a rare book from the library, makes copies, sells them as stolen goods, and Blandy verifies the book's authenticity. When Myra insists on selling a fake book to a Nazi, against Fleg's orders, trouble ensues. A detective, Hal McByrne (Richard Denning) becomes involved and falls for Myra, who is playing him against Fleg.

Most of Fleg's dialogue is psychobabble, as he analyzes Myra and himself as people who like pain and desire punishment, etc. The story is convoluted, with Fleg, posing as a police officer, coming to the library to investigate a murder. He takes the opportunity to steal rare books, saying they need to be under police protection. The books are then stolen by Hal and consequently stolen by Myra.

It all gets pretty confusing, and if you could have seen the characters throwing around these supposedly fragile, valuable books without wearing gloves or taking any kind of care, it's too much. It's always great to see Sanders and Patrick (who, as Gail Patrick Jackson, wound up as producer of the Perry Mason TV series) - he makes a great villain and she's a wonderful femme fatale.

All in all, disjointed and disappointing.

John Larkin being a director I had never heard of, I checked up his details on IMDB and learned that he did more TV than cinema work. In fact, to kick off with he fittingly titled this opus QUIET PLEASE: MURDER - as pretty much the entire action takes place inside municipal library premises.

To add to the claustrophobia, this is 1942, WWII rages on, and alllights have to be switched off so that the building does not turn into a target - which I find rather odd, as I do not believe that any US mainland city has ever become the target for any aircraft bombing raids.

The action opens with Jim Fleg (superbly portrayed by the mellifluously persuasive George Sanders) icing the guard of a unique first edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet (people still read plays in those days!) and then forging copies of it to sell to not so up to speed collectors.

The scheme, implemented with the aid of sultry Gail Patrick as slippery, serpentine Myra Blandy, who reportedly has Nazi connections and keeps declaring her fake love to Sanders and Richard Denning (apt choice for the role of copper Hal McByrne) works well until Martin Cleaver, a more knowledgeable collector, happens on the scene to snap up one of the forged Hamlets.

The script boasts some highly literate dialogue - particularly in the sequences involving Sanders - and some sharp one-liners from Denning.

Sadly the blurred copy that I watched hurt the quality of the cinematography... but not the film's dark, closed atmospheric ambiance.

Well worth a watch! 7/10.

George Sanders ("Fleg) is up to no good in this light-hearted tale of theft and forgery. He has pinched an original Shakespeare folio and has been subsequently flogging copies. Unfortunately for him, his selling agent "Myra" (Gail Patrick) is none too bright and when she inadvertently sells one of his copies to a Nazi - their very lives are soon in peril, and it might actually be policeman "McByrne" (Richard Denning) who comes to their rescue! The acting is good, the writing quite pithy and it packs quite a lot into 70 minutes. Maybe the production is a touch basic; the settings are all a bit too static, but unlike so many of these cheap and cheerful B features, this one has a decent story that is actually quite enjoyable to watch.

Worth watching for George Sanders dialogue alone. Obviously a B movie with a very limited budget but its a lot of fun to watch. If you're a George Sanders fan like me you wont be dissapointed!