Murder Will Out

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 25

Murder Will Out

“CANARY CASE” IN TALKIE

Mystery Thriller at the Strand

117 HO killed tlie Canary ? ™ Audiences at the Strand are puzzled by this problem, one of the most mysterious yet provided in screen form. It forms the thrilling plot of “The Canary Murder Case,” a new and remarkable Paramount all-talkie which opened yesterday.

Both as an entertainment and as a technical achievement with film speech, “The Canary Murder Case” is one of the best talkies yet seen and heard in Auckland. Certainly it is Paramount’s finest achievement to date.

A DAPPED from a mystery story by S. S. Van Dine, it has been produced as a compelling and intriguing thriller, possessing to a high degree those qualities of grim, exciting uncertainty without which no picture of this type is complete. The players are Louise Brooks, the “Canary,” James Hall, Jean Arthur, and William -Powell, all of whom speak and act excellently.

The story introduces Margaret Odell, known as “The Canary," Broadway’s most coldly ambitious showgirl gold-digger, who is found strangled to death in her apartment. Philo Vance, an amateur detective, is called. “Who murdered the Canary?” Was it Mannix, the fat broker who loved

her. Was it Spotswoodc, who feared for his son? Was it Lindquist, the half-insane doctor? Was it Cleaver, whoso political career she menaced? Detect' ves arrested Alys La Fosse, of the chorus, and her sweetheart, Jimmy Spotswoode. “It’s one of them!” they declare, “and another man was locked in the closet and saw the murder.”

But only the body of the eyewitness is found—he, too, has been strangled! With the case thus complicated, Vance works to save his friend’s son.

There follows a breath-taking denouement in which the puzzle is solved. Throughout, the voice is the thing—demanding attention, magnifying interest, and increasing values over and over again.