Behind That Curtain (1929)

hyped garbage

An Exercise In Nonsense

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This early talkie crime melodrama, just like so many other films at the time, still had to cope with many problems: the actors not yet having been adequately trained for talking pictures, the poor sound quality, and the scripts that also were written by people who'd written either silent movie scripts or stage plays before, but never any TALKIE script.So this 'old' story of a lovely young girl marrying the wrong man who soon turns out not only to be a cheat and an egoist, but also a murderer, and her faithful friend, famous explorer Beetham, coming to her rescue at his own life's risk may look a little pale today - and especially for those who know that it's the oldest still existing movie in which the great Chinese detective Charlie Chan appears, and is even actually played by an Asian! Well, E.L. Park does quite nicely - in the few moments he appears toward the end of the movie... All the rest of the investigation is being done by British detective Sir Frederick Bruce (Gilbert Emory).Well, if we - even as really fervent admirers of the 'Charlie Chan' movies - accept that fact (anyway, his name isn't mentioned in the title to lead us astray and make us think that this is an 'actual' Charlie Chan movie), we can see "Behind That Curtain" simply as a late 1920s' murder and love drama, not one of the best ones for sure, but still with quite a lot of suspense, an exotic atmosphere which takes us all the way from England via India to China (in fact, Boris Karloff can be seen in one of his early roles as Beetham's Indian servant), fascinating shots of the desert, and - even IF they're becoming a little melodramatic at times - a loving couple, Lois Moran and Warner Baxter (one of the big matinée idols in silents as well as in early talkies), for whose fate we really DO care! An interesting document of early tries at sound cinema; and a quite entertaining and suspenseful one, too, for the friends of classic Hollywood.

After a couple of silent screen films, Charlie Chan was introduced to the talking picture with Behind That Curtain. Someone at Fox films had some faith in the character because after this film, it was that faith that created a series.To put it bluntly this was a stodgy overacted mess by a lot of the players who were just getting used to sound film. Except for Warner Baxter who would win the second Best Actor Oscar for In Old Arizona, the rest chewed the scenery, possibly to breathe some life into this story.Lois Moran has been swept off her feet by the dashing Philip Strange who is a real swine of a human being, a fact her father Claude King recognizes. He much prefers explorer Warner Baxter as a suitable husband for his daughter, but she's made her mind up and Baxter steps aside jolly good sport that he is.Afterward it's discovered that Strange has murdered a detective who King had hired to get dirt on him. And it's certainly alluded that there was dirt to get. Moran runs off to the Persian desert on Baxter's expedition, but Strange won't let her go.The end is in San Francisco where their top homicide cop Charlie Chan helps set the trap to nab Strange. E.L. Park plays Charlie who only has one real scene of consequence. Behind That Curtain is melodramatic, overacted, and dull. Good thing that Fox Studios kept the franchise for Warner Oland. This really doesn't deserve to be included in Charlie Chan films, but I suppose it has to be.

"Behind That Curtain" can be described in one word: agonizing.Some caveats. Historically it is wonderful to see. It is the sound debut of Boris Karloff and of Charlie Chan, who has a very small role in this.Back in 1929, actors were still learning how to handle talkies. It was an awkward time. The camera was stationary, for one thing.The style of acting was different, and so was the style of script."Behind That Curtain" is a good example of flowery, maudlin dialogue ("Do you know what it's like for a man like myself to envision you every night in that other tent? Looking upon the same desert?") and actors over-enunciating - worse than that, speaking slowly with huge pauses. "Did...you...find...any...thing." Also there was a lot of a dramatically stated "Do you mean..." without finishing the sentence -- usually regarding something sexual.In the story, a man hires a detective to investigate his niece Eve's (Lois Moran) fiancé Eric (Philip Strange). Her uncle believes he's only interested in her money. An old friend, John Beetham (Warner Baxter), who is in love with Eve himself, visits during this time. The detective is found dead. Eve and Eric marry anyway and move to India.It turns out uncle was right - Eric is a lazy brute who has moved his mistress/maid into the house and is constantly taking Eve's money. Desperate to get away from him, when John passes through India on an exploration, she begs him to take her along. Separate tents. The police haven't given up on the detective's murder, and they find Beetham to question him, and know that Eve is with him. Eve hides from them and then disappears, winding up in San Francisco. That's where Chan (E.L. Park) comes in.In the second part of the film, Lois Moran's rhythm picks up. Attractive and somewhat androgynous with her short haircut, she is an appealing actress saddled with over-dramatic speeches - I would love to see her in something else. Back then, Warner Baxter was tall and dapper, not the older, somewhat defeated personality of later years. He handles the dialogue pretty well, probably the best of everyone. Karloff plays his manservant and gets the big line "The desert gives and the desert takes away." Just know what you're in for if you decide to watch this. It's interesting to see how acting styles have changed since then, becoming much more subtle now, but also how someone like Baxter could seem more modern, as could Barrymore, Fairbanks Jr., and others.

As others have noted, this film is very dull. This is largely due to the extremely slow delivery of actor Gilbert Emery, who plays Sir Frederic Bruce of Scotland Yard. You can almost sense the impatience of the other actors whenever he's onscreen. If you're only curious about Charlie Chan, skip to the last 10 or 15 minutes.According to THE FILMS OF BORIS KARLOFF, by Richard Bojarski, this was released in both sound and silent versions (a common practice during the early years of sound films). It would be interesting to see if the silent version, running at a faster film speed, is less dull.