Charlie Chan nos Jogos Olímpicos

Every four years comes the Olympic Games which is when the leading capitalist corporate brands and countries strive for world supremacy, and the hyped-up media urges the public to admire athletic junkies beating the clean and honest. I wonder if the trillions of dollars spent on it could be better used to try to feed the hungry and cure the diseased? Give me a three-legged race at a junior school any day!

Charlie has no such hang-ups about going to Nazi Germany. He wants to go on fish-hunt but ends up on man-hunt instead as secret government McGuffin that enables war planes fly by remote control is stolen. The trail and chase to recover it leads from Honolulu to San Francisco to New York and Berlin – with swift global communications it was such a small world after all! At first he's helped by little Cheeky Chan, but when he gets to Berlin no.2 son Lee takes over who is participating at the Games as a swimmer. The likely suspect is the dame in the white fox fur but it turns out more complicated involving gangs of spies and a maze of sinister characters, and all in Berlin too. It's intrigue at warp speed, hardly a second is wasted. Favourite bits: the footage of the Hindenburg (and its unperturbed passengers) beating the ocean liner's passengers to Germany; Charlie's touching faltering concern for the kidnapped Lee; the denouement; Lee continually trying to spout killer aphorisms like his Pop - or something like that!

Overall imho a good entry in the series with a slightly different format to those preceding, and I'd rather watch this than the real Olympics - no contest.

An experimental plane's guidance system is stolen and Charlie Chan's on the case. He follows the clues to Berlin, where the 1936 Olympic Games are being held. Amusingly, "Number One Son" Lee Chan is a member of the U.S. Olympic Swim Team. He even wins! As usual, Warner Oland is a perfect Charlie Chan. In addition to Keye Luke's Lee, this time we get Charlie Chan, Jr. He's played by Layne Tom, Jr. and is all kinds of adorable. I wonder why he wasn't made a permanent part of the series because he's a lot of fun. Also includes one of the loveliest actresses to appear in the entire Chan series, Katherine DeMille. Hubba-hubba! She was the adopted daughter of Cecil B. DeMille and future wife of Anthony Quinn. There's also some nice support from reliable character actors C. Henry Gordon, John Eldredge, and Jonathan Hale. Good cast in this one.

This entry in the series is most notable for it taking place during the 1936 Olympics, with footage from the games including Jesse Owens. Plus Charlie travels to Berlin on the Hindenburg. It also features pre-WWII German police portrayed in a much more sympathetic light than they would be just a few years later. Although, it should be noted Inspector Strasser (Frederik Vogeding) of the German police is kind of a boob ("Things like this cannot happen in Berlin!"). An excellent entry in the Charlie Chan series with high entertainment value and some added historical curiosity. Fans should love it.

... that being that the film is set at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

A plane is doing a test flight with a brand new invention vital to the defense of the United States when the plane disappears. The audience can see inside the cockpit that someone hiding inside the plane overpowers the actual pilot, but the cast is denied this knowledge. Charlie Chan finds the plane with the body of the pilot nearby while on a fishing trip with one of his younger sons. A careful investigation leads suspicions to somebody who is part of the American Olympic team, and thus he has left Hawaii for Berlin. Therefore Chan goes to Berlin himself to continue the investigation. A further complcation is that oldest Chan son Lee is a competitor in the games there.

Set in 1936, there is quite a bit of stock footage of the 1936 Olympic games. There is one shot with the torch bearer running down the stairs with people in the crowd on either side of him clearly performing the Nazi salute. The Berlin police are portrayed as pedantic stumble bums whose hearts are in the right place and who act and dress like the Kaiser is still alive versus the rather lethal group that they had become by 1936 - not a group you'd want to tangle with.

What is really ironic is that Charlie postulates that the radio control device will be sold in Germany to some unnamed group of international terrorists because they feel "safe" in Germany during the games because of the presence of so many people from many nations. It's so interesting to see how the United States and the rest of the world did not take Hitler's Germany seriously until it was almost too late.

In the scene on board the Hindenburg involving CC and 2 other men, look closely at the title of the article in the magazine that the seated man is reading. It's "Think fast, Mr. Moto"!!!

I enjoyed this CC movie for its locations. Opening in Hawaii w/#2 son. On board the ship with #1 son. CC flying in the Hindenburg. And finally the Olympic Stadium. Jonathan Hale, as usual, is just suspicious enough to be a legitimate villain/red herring...(???) The arms dealer, foreign diplomat and the lady w/the white fox fur all add intrigue and deception to the plot.

We also get to check out Warner Oland's physical condition as he jogs with his shirt off for his physical at the movie's beginning.

While Charlie's multi-talented son Lee is traveling by ship to Europe as a member of the US Olympics team, his father searches at home for a newly invented remote control device for planes which is probably on its way to be sold to some obscure foreign power (the political tensions all over the world are already perceptible three years before the beginning of WW II, but the movie doesn't show any affiliation or enmity yet) - and happens to be on the same ship with Lee and his friends, guarded by a 'femme fatale' (Cecil B. DeMille's adoptive daughter Katherine in her probably best role) who arouses the dislike of the young athletes only because she keeps flirting with one of them although he's got a steady girlfriend...

Charlie, in the meantime, has found out the 'traveling route' of the device, and 'overtakes' it, first by plane and then aboard the famous zeppelin 'Hindenburg' (which would crash only a year later). But from the moment on that the athletes (one of whom 'smuggled' it into the country without even knowing it), the spies and the police mingle, there is constant confusion, until Charlie seems to have it safely in the hands of the German police authorities - BUT the spies have got Lee...

From this moment, we really FEEL the agony of Charlie as a father, and his dilemma of handing the important invention over to the spies or risking his son's life - certainly a very earnest and dramatic entry in the 'Charlie Chan' movies, but not without its lighter moments; and besides that, we get a glimpse of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - a real time document.