The Murder Man (1935)

Best movie ever!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

A man is deeply wronged by smart businessmen and acts upon it. He is morally in the right, since the culprit being acted upon would go on with his mayhem if he was not stopped and there was only this way to stop him.I cannot tell much more without Writing a spoiler but I wanted to Review this film because it tells about a moral code that seems lost today. Today everybody in America seems so committed to business that they would not react like the man above because I hear of no such stories although there must be a billion of them around and seemingly nobody is reacting on them.Maybe it will happen some time and then it will come like a big Avalanche and sweep most of it Clean - who knows? If it happens though, it will be the end of all business and the beginning of decency.

Steve Grey (Spencer Tracy) is the best homicide newspaper journalist in the city: they call him "the Murder Man." If there's a murder, he'll get all the inside information, and he'll have it on the press first. That he always succeeds despite a debilitating weakness for alcohol is considered by colleagues simply a part of his genius. In the killing of investment broker (read: con artist) James Spencer Halford – snipered in a car from a streetside shooting gallery – Grey is once again on the frontline, with an uncanny knack for reporting murder details before even the police know them. Grey plays the story from both sides, as a pivotal witness in the murder case against Henry Mander, the victim's business associate, and as a reporter ostensibly reporting the unbiased facts (intriguingly, it's a two-way street, since Grey often twists the facts to his advantage). This MGM drama, which I had expected to be as grim as the similarly- themed 'Crime Without Passion' with Claude Rains, is surprisingly light- hearted in tone for the most part. Particular amusement is provided by the lanky young form of Jimmy Stewart, boasting a cheerful cockeyed grin in his feature debut. Jimmy's first ever words in a prolific movie career? "Hi, Joe!"

The Murder Man is one of several newspaper films from the 1930's that ran the gamut of dramatic to comedic, like The Front Page and His Girl Friday respectively. What it has in common with both is its lightning quick pace and snappy dialog. What it lacks is a believable story and compelling, well drawn characters. Spencer Tracy plays Steve Grey, the murder man, so named because he handles all of the Star newspaper's homicide stories. Tracy played this hard-bitten, dramatic type of role well throughout his career, and this film is no exception. Lionel Atwill is on hand as a police official in an unusual good guy role for him. Virginia Bruce plays an unusually unglamorous role for her, that of Tracy's newspaper co-worker. The film contains a few welcome supporting performances from William Demarest, Lucien Littlefield, and a guy by the name of James Stewart (in his feature film debut). The film rests solely on Tracy's performance to carry it, and he does to a certain extent. However, the twist ending is not that believable and seems almost abrupt. In retrospect, everything in the film leading up to the ending seems contrived. It's still worth viewing for an early Tracy performance and Stewart's debut. **1/2 of 4 stars.

This was one of the first features that Spencer Tracy did for his new studio MGM when they signed him in 1935. At his first studio, 20th Century Fox he was cast in a whole lot of routine action pictures as a two-fisted rugged type in whatever role he played. It's no different here, in fact until he played Father Mullin in San Francisco, Tracy's MGM career promised more roles of the same type.Here he's a newspaper reporter in the best tradition of The Front Page which this film borrows a lot from. He's called The Murder Man because he's the one the editor, Robert Barrat, call for when he wants coverage on any homicide. He's covering one in this film concerning an investment broker (con artist) who's accused of killing his partner. In fact Tracy provides key evidence for a conviction. The movie does have a surprise ending which I won't reveal, unusual for a film in the 1930s. That and the presence of Spencer Tracy and James Stewart make it worth viewing.This was the film debut of James Stewart. He has a role of another reporter on the same paper as Tracy. He was signed by MGM after appearing on Broadway in the play Yellow Jacket and garnering rave reviews. He's the same Jimmy Stewart that soon became an icon, but he didn't get much attention for the few lines he had here. He would have to wait for his next film appearance in Rose Marie to get moviegoers attention.