Movie Review: The Moonstone (1934)
Synopsis: When Scotland Yard learns Anne Verinder's fiancé, Franklin Blake, is returning to England with a priceless and infamous Indian gemstone, Inspector Cuff becomes concerned it will be stolen. His fears are realized when the moonstone goes missing during the night, stolen out from under Anne's pillow while she slept. With no signs of forced entry, Cuff can only assume the thief was one of the people in the house, many with clear motives, His only clue to breaking the case comes from Anne's father, Sir John Verinder, who is bedridden and delirious from pneumonia.
Who's in it? The movie stars David Manners, Phyllis Barry, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Charles Irwin and Elspeth Dudgeon.
Review: I've gotten away from my routine of watching a movie every morning before heading into the office and decided to try to fix that today. I didn't have any particular movie in mind this morning, so I picked the first one that looked somewhat interesting, The Moonstone.
After watching it, I would describe this as a movie that was OK but also seemed to be lacking something.
I'll start out by saying the movie did a decent job of establishing multiple suspects for the jewel theft. At first, it seemed as though the unscrupulous debt collector, Carl Von Lucker (von Seyffertitz) was the clear culprit but, as Cuff (Irwin) conducted his investigation, it was clear there were others in the house who also had motive for doing so.
There was also the way Anne (Barry) was behaving after the theft, seeming to be reluctant to help in the investigation. I wasn't sure if it was just her being concerned over her father's (Herbert Bunston) illness or if she saw something that made her want to protect someone, either her father or Franklin (Manners) though the latter seemed to be the one person with the least motive.
My biggest problem with the movie is it didn't seem to take a whole lot of skill on Cuff's part to figure out who the thief was. Sure, there was a bit of a surprise about it, but Cuff ultimately was fed the information by the culprit, including why they did it, making it a little too easy to figure out who was in possession of the moonstone at the end.
I also felt as though the film could have made a bit more effort to explore the superstition surrounding the gemstone, including the rumors it caused ill fortune to those who held it, as well as at least attempted to create some debate over Franklin/Anne owning a jewel everyone knew was a stolen artifact. To be fair, the version of the movie I watched was missing about 15 minutes of footage, but I suspect even the uncut 62-minute version of this film wouldn't have had time to do that correctly, despite casually mentioning both.
Final Opinion: The jewel theft mystery was entertaining and did have some surprises. I just wish the film would have put more time into the more interesting pieces of the moonstone's history.
My Grade: B
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Here are some reviews of other 1930s mysteries:
Movie Review: The Devil Plays (1931)
Movie Review: The Lady in Scarlet (1935)
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