Raffles, gentleman cambrioleur

The idea of an upper class 'Amateur Cracksman' who steals jewelry for a living has a romantic aura about it and should make for a better movie than "Raffles" turns out to be. The punch line of many scenes is telegraphed, the plot is simplistic, unadorned and full of holes and the ending is absurd.

Ah, but it stars 'The Voice', Ronald Colman, and that makes all the difference. Colman and his mellifluous voice glide through every scene and anesthetizes an unbelievable story just by talking. Here he was at the height of his popularity as the dashing cricketer/thief and has as his leading lady Kay Francis, one of the loveliest stars of that era. She is unfortunately given little to do in a meager role as his fiancé. But there are some other Hollywood stalwarts in the cast, among them Alison Skipworth in one of her ditzy socialite roles and silent film bad guy David Torrence, a Scotsman with a thick Scottish accent, as the investigating detective. Also Bramwell Fletcher and Frederick Kerr, a very elderly gentleman I found delightful in "Waterloo Bridge (1930)" in the same blustery, old duffer-type role.

"Raffles" is uncomplicated and good fun, and about as deep as a dish of water, but worth your time to see and hear Colman say things - doesn't matter what, just listen to him talk. Thank TCM for dusting this one off.

Ronald Colman is "Raffles," a gentleman burglar who wants to retire but can only manage to do it for a couple of hours. Colman's costar is Kay Francis as Raffles' lady friend Gwen, and Bramwell Fletcher plays Bunny, a young man Raffles wants to help.

In the 1939 version, maybe because of the code, Raffles is a Robin Hood type who robs for the excitement and fun of it but then helps someone in need with the money or returns the merchandise. In this version, he steals, period, and in fact presents Gwen with a bracelet from one of his crimes. This film skips the whole beginning of the '39 film showing Raffles' acts of kindness, but the rest of the story is the same. Raffles decides to retire and start life anew with Gwen, but his friend Bunny shows up with a gambling problem and needs to cover a 1000 pound check by Monday. Raffles, alas, needs to do one more job.

Ronald Colman is delightful as Raffles, dashing, charming, and handsome as he cleverly attempts to escape the clutches of Scotland Yard. It's a wonderful role for him, as it was for David Niven in 1939. Kay Francis is wasted but is a good match for Coleman.

Fun film with a fine performance by Colman.

Hollywood took a few cracks at adapting E.W. Hornung's prose series about gentleman thief A.J. Raffles: in 1917, 1925, this early 1930 talkie and, again, in 1939, with the casting including such suave leading men as John Barrymore, David Niven and, here, Ronald Colman. This "Raffles" suffers being a creaky early talkie (reportedly, a silent version was also, simultaneously filmed), although its sole Academy Award nomination was for sound recording, and, indeed, it makes some good use of sound, from the start with the bobbies sipping coffee from bowls, to a clock motif and the punctuation of the usual talkfest in the early years of synchronized-sound production with sequences of silence during the nighttime burglaries. The writers even managed to get a bit of clever wordplay over the noise from the primitive recording technology of the day.

Moreover, as another character chimes, one, indeed, can't help liking Colman's Raffles. The supporting cast is decent, too, including Kay Francis as the romantic interest, David Torrence as the Scottish Scotland Yard inspector, and Alison Shipworth and Frederick Kerr are amusing as the bickering hosts to their home of guests spending the weekend, apparently, smoking, drinking and playing cricket and tennis--the sort of upper-class soirées one might expect from an episode of "Downton Abbey," where dandies in tuxedos sip brandy and retort that Americans are too savage to understand cricket.

I think what raises "Raffles" above many other early talkies, however, is the talent Samuel Goldwyn assembled behind the scenes, namely cinematographers George Barnes (5-time Oscar nominee) and Gregg Toland (who also photographed the 1939 version and is most famous for "Citizen Kane" (1941)) and art directors Park French and William Cameron Menzies (the latter of whom would invent the job of production designer during the making of "Gone with the Wind" (1939)). There's nothing amateurish in their design of the amateur cracksman's first heist scene, with the policeman's shadow lurking in the background behind store-front glass as a safe is cracked with the aid of a diegetic light source. Some camera movement is managed, too, including a nice shot of Colman on the staircase upon seeing Francis's entry. Being England, there's also a fog-filled sequence. There's nothing amazing about any of this, but it's worth noting how much difference to a slight scenario burdened by primitive new technology can benefit from skilled artists behind the camera while placing charming actors in front of it, as well as giving some thought to how to use and not use the newfangled sound.

Thus went the conversation between Ronald Colman's Raffles and the rich but vast and ageing Lady Melrose after he had courteously escorted her to her bedroom and the two hovered either side of the open door. The lady's expression, which went from bright expectation to annoyed disappointment, left no doubt what was happening. This was pre-Hayes Code and both here and elsewhere it was very obvious. Also the question of Raffle's morality. In the book, Raffles does give some kind of justification for his thieving - "the richly immoral robbing the immorally rich". He also never befriends soon to become victims. Here Colman blithely disregards all of this. The 1939 almost scene for scene word for word remake with David Niven was entirely cleaned up - but weaker and more colourless for it.

I'm a great fan of the Raffles books. E W Hornung the author was not so well known as his brother in law, Arthur Conan-Doyle but was though alround a better writer. This film is engaging and quite exciting, brings together parts from different stories and the result is entertaining but in terms of story, thin and slap-dash. The adaptation is dominated by the requirement to continue/assist Ronald Colman's highly bankable screen persona as an elegant, humorous, charming pleaser of ladies.(Raffles in the book is too dedicated to be humorous or charming unless necessary in pursuit of crime). Here Raffles love interest, Kay Francis, is very passionate, unlimited in her devotion to him. Of the two other central characters, companion in crime "Bunny" Manders is reduced to an irrelevance. Curiously the third character in the trio - McKenzie, the "Scotch" detective - alone is the all-time definitive rendering of the character in the book - Raffles' feared Nemesis: dogged, doughty and determined. Indeed the adaptation gives him equal billing with his quarry. It's a joy to watch a character from the books so vividly and truthfully brought to life. Clearly whoever did the adaptation was more interested in and relished McKenzie more than the other two.

All in all, a good entertainment.

A. J. Raffles, "the amateur cracksman," was a fictional English gentleman safecracker invented by E. W. Hornung in a series of stories beginning in 1898 as a sort of mirror image of Sherlock Holmes. Like Holmes, Raffles is a suave, upper-class intellectual involved with the underworld, but Raffles's involvement is on the wrong side of the law: he supports his upper-class lifestyle by his career as a jewellry thief.

The Raffles stories were extremely popular and have been the subject of many film, theater, and television treatments. One of the best of these is this 1930, very early talkie starring cinema's quintessential English gentleman, Ronald Coleman. It's really quite a good film for its time, with an intelligent script, generally good acting (especially by Coleman and character actor Frederick Kerr, better known as Baron Frankenstein in James Whale's famous 1931 treatment of the monster story, who steals every scene he is in as a grouchy English lord.) Co-cinematographer Gregg Toland, who later worked on many Hollywood classics, is presumably responsible for the film's noirish, atmospheric lighting effects.

All in all, I'd say this entertaining film will still be enjoyed by today's audiences, and is a must see for fans of Coleman.