A Chave do Mistério

I was interested to learn that the source for this film was a Broadway play of the same name. The Night Of January 16th was a play authored by Ayn Rand. To my viewing eye it certainly looked like all that objectivist philosophy was boiled out of the script and we are left with a reasonably entertaining B picture from Paramount.

The plot centers around business executive Nils Asther who is being called to account for 20 million dollars missing from his company books. Among those doing the accounting is Robert Preston who is the heir to the company founder and attends the board meeting in his sailor suit.

Before Asther can account, Ellen Drew his private secretary gets into a jackpot accused of his murder. It's thought by the police that Drew helped out his apartment window. There's still the missing money.

Preston and Drew make our law enforcement machinery look like fools as they escape and avoid recapture. Hats off to Cecil Kellaway for his part as a soused playboy whom they use in their escape. Kellaway is a marvelous drunk.

It's a quick trip to Havana where the two figure out where the embezzled money is located. There's quite a surprise in that also.

Preston and Drew are quite breezy in their leads. A little bit of Preston's most famous role Professor Harold Hill from The Music Man is found in his performance here. That's all to the good.

I'm sure the Broadway play was radically different than this.

For a "Night of January 16th," this was pretty lousy.

For a totally separate story just coincidentally carrying the same name, it was pretty good.

The original, a play by Ayn Rand, was entirely a courtroom drama, and the jurors were picked, randomly, from the audience. And reportedly the verdicts varied from night to night.

This movie, though, had a few of the same character names from the original and not much else.

After a murder, the victim's private secretary, played by Ellen Drew, is accused and the plot is basically she and the character played by Robert Preston trying to find the real murderer.

Along the way is some silliness -- "Old MacDonald" is sung twice, for reasons known only to the script-writer -- drunks, sloppy cops, and an air-headed female attractively played by Alice White.

Quite a good cast doesn't have a lot to do, except for Phil Nazzaro, who was famous for his double-talk patter. That script-writer gave him a good part.

All in all "The Night of January 16th" is not-especially-memorable fun. There is a mediocre print at YouTube, not, when I watched, further marred by commercial interruption so it really is free to watch.

I wonder if Ayn Rand herself would have watched. And for how long?

This Paramount B picture made in 1941, based on a successful Broadway courtroom drama written by Ayn Rand in her playwriting days, is --let's face it--a mess. The one-set play was obviously much rewritten by Hollywood hands who set out to make a movie ["open up'] the bought property. In the process, no one seems to have decided whether it should remain a courtoom drama or become a comedy or be a bit of both The confusing plot is predictably improbable, mixing comedy and suspense in a heavy-handed fashion, all directed clumsily by Wm. Clemens. Robert Preston is appealing and so is Ellen Drew. Cecil Kellaway somehow shows up along the way for no reason at all, but does a delightful turn as a drunk. Cliff Nazarro, also for no apparent story reason, appears briefly as a double-talking gas station owner. Leon Belasco is also seen as the Cuban airplane steward who ends the film. The silent movie star, Nils Asther, in one of his few sound film roles, is the the debonair continental villain. Incidentally, this film was made the same year Paramount agreed to let one of their contract writers, Preston Sturges, direct his first picture. Judging from this picture, they certainly needed all the help they could get.

Although "The Night of January 16th" was based on a play by Ayn Rand, it's pretty much typical of the murder mystery B-movies of the era...with most of the usual cliches.

The head of a big company has been apparently embezzling, as the books are short more than $20,000,000! One evening, he's apparently being attacked and his faithful secretary returns to work to help him. But she's too late...and he's apparently tossed out of his skyrise penthouse...and, oddly, the police assume she's responsible. First, she has no motive. Second, they expected this lady to overpower her boss, drag him to the ledge and then toss him over in only three minutes time?! The only person (other than her) to doubt this narrative is an odd character played by Robert Preston and they both play amateur detectives to solve the case and keep her out of prison. To do this, they make an escape from the courtroom (huh???) and travel to Cuba to wrap things up...ridiculous, of course, but no more so than the typical film in the genre!! Decent acting...otherwise not much to distinguish this one.

This should be listed as an 'escapist mystery' as it is escapist entertainment as it was known right up to WWII, A completely unbelievable mystery with comedic overtones which seeks to be a crowd pleaser. It suffers from too many improbable situations and convenient coincidences and, in 2015, would not go over with modern moviegoers.

That said, the mystery angle is a good one, and with an unexpected twist at the end of the picture. Ellen Drew is framed for the murder of her boss (Nils Asther). Robert Preston, just out of the Navy and an heir to stock in the Company in question, takes up her cause and tries to prove her innocence. You squirm and roll your eyes and credulity is stretched to the breaking point as timely interventions and preposterous non-sequiturs nearly spoil the picture - until the surprise ending.

Do you like mystery mixed with comedy? That was a staple in Hollywood during this time period, and I never thought they blended well together, especially when the comedy relief is as lame as in this movie. I would make an exception for Cecil Kellaway, who plays a drunk who befriends the pair.

A harmless murder mystery which could have been better, especially with the attractive cast and the intriguing plot. It's a good sleep aid - but then you would miss the ending.