QUIET PLEASE, MURDER

US, 1942, 70 minutes, Black-and-white.
George Sanders, Gail Patrick, Richard Denning, Lynne Roberts, Sidney Blackmer, Kurt Katch.
Directed by John Larkin.

Certainly an effective title for a murder mystery. This is a film of 1942, B-budget feature with a strong cast. It is set in the atmosphere of American involvement in World War II, the fifth column in the United States, hostility towards his day and the Nazis.

Most of the film is set in a library. With the notice, Quiet Please. There is a rather graphic opening concerning a manuscript, original, of Hamlet for the actor Richard Burbage. George Sanders, always suave with immaculate diction, is a collector who then murders the assistant. Not only is he a thief, he is also a forger and reproduces a number of copies for sale. One client is German, played by the sinister Sidney Blackmer, who realises that it is a forgery and confronts Sanders’ associate, an exceedingly self-possessed dealer in forged manuscripts, Myra, played by Gail Patrick. Into the action comes a private detective, played by a pleasantly smooth Richard Denning, who is investigating the forgeries but agrees to help Myra.

Myra does double dealing, clashes with Sanders with a whole lot of discussion about psychology and Freud, plans for a trip to the library, but, at the same time, Sanders has organised an elaborate scheme for further theft of manuscripts. And this includes his impersonating a policeman and having his gang arrived posing as police. Which leads to a number of mistaken identities, murders, betrayals, especially on Myra’s part, a librarian helping the detective… Which defies plausibility.

Not the kind of ending that one might have expected, Sanders being overcome and arrested, Myra pursued by a mute killer, dead in the street.

Different and entertaining to watch.