Le témoin imprévu

In EVELYN PRENTICE, I saw the importance of family and the real meaning of "'til death do us part," from the standard marriage vows. Work comes between John and Evelyn Prentice (William Powell and Myrna Loy). A sweet-talker comes between John and Evelyn Prince. Their daughter Dorothy brings them together, as does love.

As simple as this sounds, as possibly hokey, it mattered in 1935, and it made for a good movie. It matters in the 21st Century, as well, and the movie is still good.

The villain in this film is portrayed as totally devoid of value, his killing beneficial to the human race. Vigilante justice is an uneasy concept, but it works. The sleazy sweet-talker is shot, and John Prentice is the best attorney around.

If you like Powell and Loy beyond the Thin Man series, and there are several great ones, you'll enjoy this. Powell's character is a sophisticated as ever, Loy's as fantastically intelligent.

My wife and I enjoyed this film.

This is an absorbing, intelligent picture, bolstered by sensitive performances and adept handling of an adult story. Its fundamentals may be overly familiar, and perhaps a bit too much plot gets in the way of believable, touching characterizations. But you will care about the main characters, whose weaknesses and oversights lead them to the brink of ruin - even if (in a questionable decision by the film makers) they are given the trappings of art deco luxuries, instead of being brought closer to a lifestyle familiar to the audience.

Powell and Loy, alone and together, are fine, as always. Credit Isabel Jewell with a low-key, yet emotionally-charged performance. Jessie Ralph is excellent is one extended scene in which she babbles and equivocates as the tension builds to a quiet frenzy. Una Merkel softens her familiar screen mannerisms to play the character, rather than vice versa.

Not a well-known film, "Evelyn Prentice" is most definitely worth your while.

"Evelyn Prentice" starred William Powell & Myrna Loy, who were inbetween working on the first & second movies in "The Thin Man" series. There are similarities between their roles in this movie & their roles in that series. In both cases, they're debonair rich folks with fancy clothes & a beautiful home. In both cases, Powell plays a character who likes to drink (more so in "The Thin Man") & is involved with solving a murder mystery. But "The Thin Man" series is more light-hearted, with more flippant, snappier dialog, & is generally more enjoyable than "Evelyn Prentice." Astra the Dog is missed, & replaced by the couple's young daughter. But this is a good movie, & has a more surprising plot twist than any entry in "The Thin Man" series. The plot here has more typical pre-code elements than the later "Thin Man" entries, which I won't mention here because I don't want to give away the storyline. Una Merkel is good as Loy's wisecracking friend. Isabel Jewell is very convincing in her role (I didn't think so at first, but as I began to watch her more closely, I started to think that she's a really good actress). I rate it 8/10.

Lenore Coffee was a prolific screenwriter whose specialty was the "women's picture," and she writes a honey of one here. William Powell is a too-busy lawyer who's dallying with client Rosalind Russell and who neglects his family (and boy, can I identify with that), to the point where good wife Loy is momentarily distracted by a lounge-lizard poet with a busy black book. Disastrous complications ensue. William Howard's direction is workmanlike at best, but Coffee keeps the fireworks popping. She balances things expertly between smart, sassy dialog and courtroom melodramatics, and she can write persuasively for tart-tongued best friends (a soignee Una Merkel), wide-eyed daughters (a relatively unannoying Cora Sue Collins), wronged women (a heavy-lidded Isabel Jewell), and a supporting cast of New York sophisticates. The windup is a little fast and the idyllic fadeout not entirely convincing, but in these days of overheated trials and yellow Murdoch journalism, it's not entirely implausible, either. A very fast and smart comedy-drama, and I didn't mind the absence of the Nick and Nora personas, or Asta, one bit.

This movie is one of the best examples of what resulted when the studio machine didn't quite know what to do with its talent pool.

Powell and Loy, who had recently proven themselves a winning team in the original Thin Man, are again the urbane marrieds. Their individual talents and snappy chemistry aren't entirely swamped by this soapy melodrama, but they are given a slight patina of caricature. Thank god the studio figured it out and gave us five more Thin Man movies.

The very freaky thing about this movie is the film debut of the divine Roz Russell. Granted, she was an extremely beautiful woman, but casting her in the Joan Crawford femme fatale role gives unintentional comedy and a textbook demonstration of "What do we do with this one" syndrome. Thank god the studio figured it out and gave us the rest of her career.

As a movie, Evelyn Prentice is not bad lazy rainy Sunday viewing. It's much more interesting as a piece of oddball film history and an object lesson in how mediocre things can happen to great people.