CHARLIE CHAN IN MONTE CARLO
US, 1938, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.
Warner Öland, Keye Luke, Virginia Field, Sidney Blackmer, Harold Huber, Kay Linaker, Robert Kent, Edward Raquello, George Lynn, Louis Mercier.
Directed by Eugene forward.
This was the last of the Charlie Chan films with actor Warner Öland. It moves in the same vein as all the others but, offscreen, Öland had difficulties with alcohol as well as touches of dementia and was soon to die. Keye Luke is particularly exuberant in this film, mangling the French.
The film has a number of popular supporting actors at the time, especially Virginia Field and Sidney Blackmer who was to have a long career. Harold Huber is entertaining as the Monaco chief of police (just after being a New York officer in Charlie Chan on Broadway).
Charlie Chan is in Monte Carlo, seemingly on vacation, but sent to investigate double dealings with bonds. He is aided, sometimes not so well helped, by his son (in an amusing scene where Charlie Chan wants waffles and draws the design which the waiter at the hotel interprets as his wanting a crossword puzzle!).
Harold Huber is full of zest as the police chief, wanting to do the best for his visitors only to assign them to a taxi which continually backfires and strands them – where they discover a dead body in a car and, Lee, unable to be clear in French, seems to confess to the murder and the two are arrested.
Sidney Blackmer is rather hard and insistent as the chief banker – and audiences will have him fully in line as the villain, especially for the murder of the courier in the car, and the death of a bartender who had been keeping bonds for Blackmer’s wife who is trying to get them back to save her marriage. It is revealed she is being blackmailed because she had been married to the bartender.
There is another very suave businessman who is also under suspicion. Then there is the bank assistant, very loyal, in love with a British model has recently come to Monte Carlo but lives an expensive lifestyle. There are lies on the part of everyone concerned, sabotaging their alibis, the British model having driven her car, the suspicious businessman ordering and then cancelling a plane from Nice airport, the wife covering up her relationship and her visit to pay money to the blackmailer only to find him dead.
So, lots of interviews, lots of intervention by the Monte Carlo police chief, sorting out the lies of the rest of the suspects and, pleasingly for the audience, the villain and murderer turns out to be the young bank assistant who has been lavish in gifts to his girlfriend and manipulating accounts.
And so, the last Charlie Chan film of Warner Öland.
CHARLIE CHAN FILMS
Charlie Chan was the creation of novelist Earl Deer Biggers, creator of the popular novel Seven Keys to Baldpate (adapted for the stage in the early 20th century and the plot of many films of the same name and variations). Biggers saw the beginning of the popularity of the films of Charlie Chan in the silent era but died at the age of 48 in 1933, just as the series with Warner Land was becoming more popular.
20th Century Fox was responsible for the early Charlie Chan films with Warner Oland and gave them more prestigious production values than many of the short supporting features of the time. After Oland’s death, Fox sold the franchise to Monogram Pictures with Sidney Toler in the central role. They were less impactful than the early films. There were some films later in the 1940s with Roland Winters in the central role.
The films generally ran for about 71 minutes, and similarities in plots, often a warning to Charlie Chan to leave a location, his staying when murders are committed, displaying his expertise in thinking through situations and clues. He generally collaborates with the local police who, sometimes seem, characters, but ultimately are on side.
Warner Oland was a Swedish actor who came with his family to the United States when he was a child. Some have commented that for his Chinese appearance he merely had to adjust his eyebrows and moustache to pass for Chinese – even in China where he was spoken to in Chinese. And the name, Charlie Chan, became a common place for reference to a Chinese. In retrospect there may have been some racial stereotype in his presentation but he is always respectful, honouring Chinese ancestors and traditions. Charlie Chan came from Honolulu.
Quite a number of the film is Keye Luke appeared as his son, very American, brash in intervening, make mistakes, full of American slang (and in Charlie Chan in Paris mangling French). Luke had an extensive career in Hollywood, his last film was in 1990 been Woody Allen’s Alice and the second Gremlins film.
Quite a number of character actors in Hollywood had roles in the Charlie Chan films, and there was a range of directors.
Oland had a portly figure and the screenplay makes reference to this. His diction is precise and much of the screenplay is in wise sayings, aphorisms, which are especially enhanced by the omission of “the� and “a� in delivery which makes them sound more telling and exotic.
There was a Charlie Chan film the late 1970s, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen with Peter Ustinov in the central role.
