A MISS MAVEN REVIEW

BEHIND THAT CURTAIN

	This is technically a Charlie Chan movie, made from Earl Derr Biggers’ novel of the same name.
	Blink, though, and you’ll miss Chan!
	Fox Films made “Behind That Curtain” over for Warner Baxter as Colonel John Beetham, regulating Chan’s character to hardly more than a bit part with the best of it off screen.
	You  have to wonder why the Asian actor, E.L. Park, was chosen to play the Chinese detective from Honolulu.
	Was the part so small because his acting was so stilted or because nobody else would take such a small part?!
	“Behind That Curtain” (1929) is still worth watching for several reasons.
	Warner Baxter was a fine actor with a long career and this movie shows him early in that career as Colonel John Beetham
	Baxter is clearly among those actors who were in that transition from silents to talkies since his performance varies from the stilted, mannered acting of the twenties to the more natural style of the sound era.
	Boris Karloff, ironically, plays a small role as Baxter’s manservant.
	He had already played in some 60 movies when he appeared in “Behind . . .” but he was showing the incredible talent that gave his Frankenstein’s monster such a stand-out performance—without Karloff having to say a word.
	Mercedes De Valasco plays the maid, Nuna, fairly well as a girl who’s no better than she has to be except for when she’s fanning her boss a third of the way through.
	The song she sings is in a foreign language, which most of us could deal with, but she sings it over and over and over and over . . . . 
	The scene right after that isn’t much better with Philip Strange as Eric Durand.
	His acting as the cheating husband finally confronted by his wife is every bit as artificial as Karloff’s is natural.
	The film proper, like some of the actors, can be difficult to watch.
	Hollywood had achieved a high standard of quality in film-making in the twenties but sound sent everybody back to almost a new beginning in developing film that could accommodate the new technology as well as acting.
	Fox Films does provide great visuals in “Behind That Curtain.”
	The sets vary from English manor houses in Devonshire to desert scenes complete with tents and camels in the mid East.
	We even get Scotland Yard Inspector Bruce (Gilbert Emery) traveling by plane to Beetham’s encampment in Persia before we’re treated to great shots of San Francisco, California.
	We also have a few bloopers starting with Sir George Mannering (Claude King) finishing a phone call.
	He puts it on the table instead of back on its cradle and leaves it there.
	Eric Durand’s right arm is seen resting on the chain support of his swing when Eve says she’s going to the bazaar.
	His arm is down at his side in the shot when she leaves.
	Her hair is very short when she begs Colonel Beetham to take her with him on his four-month trek though India, Iran, and Persia, leaving everything behind.
	Her hair is still short four months later at the end of the journey.
	Don’t you wish we knew how she did it?!
	Three of the four Charlie Chan movies that Fox made after this film are lost.
“Behind That Curtain” (for good, bad or indifference) just wets the appetite for Chan lovers for Warner Oland as the Chinese Detective Supreme who knew how to “walk softly and go far.”

December 29, 2005