The murders start with the body of Robin. He is found with a arrow through the heart, but Vance deduces that the body was placed and not found where he was killed. The note found dealing with the murder was part of a nursery rhyme and signed by 'Bishop'. The only witness may have been Mrs. Drukker and Adolph, but they are not talking. As the murders progress, each one is accompanied by a nursery rhyme. It is up to Philo Vance to unravel the clues and unmask the identity of the murderer 'Bishop'.
11 Dec The Bishop Murder Case (1929)
Struggles With Science
Movies today are a large part of how we define ourselves. But many of the structural elements of today’s films are a result of punctuated evolution, times where decisions were made. These were fast and permanent. I recommend this film not for its intrinsic value – after all few films have value outside of their fueling of life; but because you can retrospectively witness one of these cusps in structural change.
The silent film was a matter of shadow puppets with humans, hardly ‘real,’ very abstract in fact. Then film went through a spurt in which certain ideas warred for supremacy. You can see some of that here.
The most obvious battle is over the notion of narrative engagement. I could have chosen three or four films as my example, but I selected this because it has Basil Rathbone. He would later become an archetype in the form that would win. And this has a remarkable reference to three external forms that were part of the battle.
By the time of this film, books had already been taken completely over by the detective story.
The reason is because it offered a new type of engagement with the reader: the reader and writer struggle with one another to determine the vision into what happens next. Nominally the writer is playing a game on his turf, but as experienced, the reader can win. The detective provides a “science” based avatar, often moving in alliances between writer and reader but mostly for the reader.
The writer of the Philo Vance books was a great student of this theory and was astonishingly popular. He is forgotten today because so many masters subsequently built on his theories, but one might credit him with being the first real theorist of narrative engagement by detection, sort of a science of observation of the science of observation.
His books were ‘picked up’ for movies. They translated badly because the adapters actually thought the story was important and were ignorant of the game. Nevertheless, the viewer of this adaptation can see reference to three templates for Van Dine’s ideas: the game of chess, the plays of Ibsen, and the self-referential irony of ’fairy tales.’
His ‘Kennel Case’ was a far better story, redone as’Calling Philo Vance.’ But this one is much more interesting because it is about itself, and unwittingly about the theory of reflection in film narrative. We have scientists, chess players and detectives all cast as rather much the same, presumably all capable of `writing’ the case, as the writings appear in snippets. (True to dramatic conventions of the time, the women have no minds at all.)
Each is cast as primary suspect, then killed (or attempted so).
See also the abstract nature of the staging. While the exteriors used real buildings with normal sized floors and windows, the interiors are extraordinary: ceilings at least thirty feet high, with windows as large. Doors ten feet high, but stairs that only raise one six feet or so. Desks that must be twenty feet broad.
And one can incidentally see the acting style carried over from the silents, a reminder that this is transitional film.
Posted in 2004
Ted’s Evaluation — 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
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