Le mystère du rapide

Charles Ruggles, Mary Carlisle, and Una Merkel star in this crime thriller on a train, made just as the Hays Production was starting to be enforced. Merkel and Carlisle are telephone operators, Ruth and Georgia, but when circumstances change, they end up on a train, in a private car, with the absent minded, stuttering Ruggles as Godfrey Scott. He "deflects" crimes before they occur....(?) And of course, a 35 year old Sterling Holloway (voice of Winnie the Pooh) as an office boy. Keep a quick eye out for Walter Brennan, the railroad switch- man, in a real brief appearance. They pack a lot of action into the 63 minute shortie from MGM. Good photography with the train "chase scenes", in spite of all the back mattes and sped up film scenes used. There is a confusing scene near the beginning, before they all get on the train, but it becomes quite an entertaining film. Appears to have been remade in 1942 as Grand Central Murder (?) also by MGM.

One thing you can say for sure, it certainly is not a rip-off of "The Thin Man" or any other big budget murder mystery of its time.

The scene opens on two switchboard operators busy at work at an investment firm - Ruth Raymond and Georgia Latham (Mary Carlisle and Una Merkel). One day an investigator informs Ruth that she is the long lost daughter of a wealthy man. She is to be whisked away via a private car to New York to meet her father. She asks her friend and coworker, Georgia, to come along too, and thus the adventure begins.

Onboard the train the bodies start piling up, there is a mysterious invisible voice telling Ruth she has only hours to live, and there are doubts raised as to whether or not she is the long lost daughter of the wealthy man in the first place. Along for the ride is the long-time boyfriend of Ruth, as well as a goofy fellow, Godfrey Scott (Charles Ruggles), who has taken a shine to Georgia before all of this mystery began and appointed himself investigator of the case. There are escaped primates in assorted sizes and also a plot device that reminds me of the "Wild Wild West" TV show.

Ruggles' act can get tiresome depending on how big a dose is injected into a particular movie, but there is so much going on here that I really didn't think him more of a hindrance than a help, plus the building relationship between himself and Merkel's character is adorable. I'd recommend it if you're in the mood for a rather offbeat film that is certainly very atypical output for MGM of the period.

This is a fast-paced and highly enjoyable comedy-thriller from the MGM B-movie mill. The plot concerns a pretty switchboard operator who discovers that she is the long-lost daughter of a wealthy industrialist. On a cross-country train trip to visit him, a mysterious villain threatens her and her entourage with murder through messages and the occasional disembodied voice.

The first two-thirds of the movie are played mainly for laughs, with sharp, witty dialog and goofy situations. This leads to a frantic no-holds-barred climax as a runaway railway car hurtles down a mountain line, narrowly missing speeding trains coming its way.

Charlie Ruggles creates another wonderfully eccentric character, a "deflector" -- something like a detective, but instead of solving crimes he uses his savvy to prevent them from occurring. He mangles many an old aphorism, and has some terrific exchanges with the equally incisive Una Merkel. He even gets to interact with some circus animals in amusing fashion. Pre-code buffs will enjoy some of the subtly racy asides (listen for Ruggles' full name, for instance), but modern viewers may be dismayed by the racially insensitive material to which "Snowflake" is subjected as the frightened porter (he has a larger role than usual, and certainly plays the demeaning stereotype with aplomb).

Definitely worth an hour of any buff's time, and a "keeper" for railway aficionados.

Seldom will the words "what were they thinking?!" come to mind while enjoying a film as often as while watching this pseudo-mystery from the early days of sound at MGM - though not as early as the haphazard writing would suggest.

Enjoy it you will, however, as the odds and ends the entertainment are assembled from are largely quality remainders, borrowed from all kinds of other films than the mystery the title leads one to expect.

Who knows what the original mystery play ("The Rear Car") the film is based on was really like? It lacked sufficient merit to make it to Broadway (neither did "Everybody Comes To Rick's," but that didn't seem to hurt CASABLANCA much), but the stagy "thriller" aspects of the center part of the film suggest that the tossed in ingredients didn't hurt it any.

Chief among the "tossed in" ingredients is Charlie Ruggles' Godfrey Scott, a supposed "detective" occupied far more with the kind of bumbling burlesque comedy Ruggles had been perfecting since his movie debut back in 1914 (and would continue to mine right up until his death in 1970). By the 1930's Ruggles was a well recognized Hollywood commodity in such hits as Brandon Thomas' CHARLEY'S AUNT, THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, LOVE ME TONIGHT and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. MURDER IN THE PRIVATE CAR must have seemed a decidedly second tier assignment to the comedian, but he gave it his all . . . though the biggest laugh in the script may come in the credits - "Edgar Allan Woolf," one of the co-writers was clearly named after Edgar Allan POE, the founder of the modern mystery format with his "C. Auguste Dupin stories in the 1840's! So much for legitimate mystery credentials in this film.

The silly plot (a lost heiress found and at risk) had already been the subject of too many musicals and farces to be taken entirely seriously, and the film makers don't spend to much time seriously laying out the clues and red herrings even though the golden age of the murder mystery was near its peak. Instead, they pull out the stops with cinema-friendly special effects like runaway trains and (never explained) secret panels.

It starts and remains a supremely silly hodge podge, but fun nonetheless for all but the serious mystery fan the title seems to want to attract. Watch for Ruggles and Una Merkle, and don't worry so much about the title murder(s) and a good time is to be had.

In his career during the 30s Charlie Ruggles was a master of silly and non-sequitar comedy. No one could mix a metaphor quite like Ruggles as he proves in Murder In A Private Car.

The film concerns two switchboard operators and best friends Una Merkel and Mary Carlisle. Just one day private detective Porter Hall contacts Carlisle and tells her she is the missing heiress to a fortune and millionaire Berton Churchill's daughter. As a toddler Carlisle was kidnapped and placed in an orphanage by nefarious forces unknown.

Those same nefarious forces are determined to see she doesn't get to be reunited with dad. Let's say there's a lot of money at stake.

So begins an eventful trip with a few deaths, an escaped gorilla, and romance developing between another private detective Ruggles and Merkel. Ruggles is kind of shoehorned into the plot. He's not a detective, Ruggles calls himself a deflector one who prevents crime rather than solve it. That was in fact the premise of the TV series Checkmate back in the day.

Even with 'murder' in the title, Murder In The Private Car is still an amusing little item. Listen carefully to Ruggles, you may have to watch this film one or two times to catch all the bon mots he utters.

They and he are worth catching.