UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

JohnHowardReid Associate producer: Edward F. Cline. Producer: A.M. Botsford. Copyright 25 September 1936 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Rialto: 20 November 1936. 7 reels. 69 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A gangster beats a murder rap, only to be gunned down by either a mystery woman or possibly a reporter. COMMENT: A typical Paramount "B" in that most of the action (and exhilaratingly fast-paced action it is too) is saved for the final reel. Elsewhere, we have to make do with a rather talky screenplay enlivened by a few wisecracks from somewhat dull hero Lew Ayres (assisted by the delightful Joyce Compton) yet weighed down by the dead hand of Frank Sheridan as a continuously ranting-to-little-effect police chief. Onslow Stevens delivers an effective study of a personable yet ruthless gangster and it's good to see Ernest Cossart making hay in an unusual role as his attorney. Cult favorite Gail Patrick is in there pitching too. Director Barton makes the most of a conspicuously uneven script which often descends into static chatter as soon as the story gains interest. These dull passages enable even less astute audiences to detect a few gaping holes in the plot. Still, the grand chase climax and revelation make up for most of the inertia. Best acting? I'd pick Joe Sawyer over Paul Kelly any day. Admittedly, despite his smallish role, Joe has the sharper lines.

classicsoncall It probably took me about an hour longer to watch this film than it's stated run time of sixty nine minutes; I just had to keep re-winding to pick up details and dialog that blew by too quickly to catch the first time around. Like the patter in my summary line above, or the clunky line from the police chief confronting a room full of reporters following Redfield's murder - "I'm going to put the guilty person in the chair if I have to build an electrical grandstand". An electrical grandstand? Just check your mental imagery of that one! I've seen Lew Ayres a couple of times now, but not in a picture like this. He had sort of a Jack Lemmon quality both in appearance and attitude. Of course Lemmon came by much later, so I guess you could say that Jack had a Lew Ayres-like quality coming out of "Murder With Pictures". Anyway, you get my drift.Well you better pay close attention, or you're going to miss details in the most unlikely of spots. Like Kent Murdock taking a shower with his pants on. Maybe the film makers knew that Meg Archer (Gail Patrick) would climb in there with him, but as a character in the story, he wouldn't have. Murdock's also shown wearing suspenders under his bathrobe without a shirt on. Does anyone get dressed like that? Just wondering.This one is my favorite though - at the newspaper photo shop department, when Meg comes looking for Murdock, she drops a key, presumably from Murdock's apartment. It was for Room 318, but in more than one shot, Murdock's apartment door clearly showed he lived in 315.Well, as in a lot of mystery pictures of the era, you have a bunch of credibility defying stuff, and this one has a boat load. I don't know how someone could shoot a guy in a room full of people and not know from what general direction the gunshot, excuse me, camera shot came from. It might have been silent in the picture, but you know that doesn't quite work. I'm sure it was necessary for all that intrigue over the missing negative, but still. I guess that's why I keep coming back for these programmers from the Thirties and Forties, just to see all the goofy stuff they tried to pass on movie goers of the era.

Terrell-4 When gangster kingpin Nate Girard gets off the hook at his trial for murder, his high-priced shyster lawyer throws a party to celebrate...and the guests are the reporters and news photographers who covered the trial. What a bunch...cigar chewers, bumbling shutter clickers and wise alecks. Yeah, and Kent Murdoch (Lew Ayres) was there, ace photographer always with an angle and a wise crack, fast with his words, especially "Now listen, baby..." when he's with a good-looking dame. He's a decent guy. There's I. B. McGoogin (Paul Stewart), fast- talking, wisecracking news reporter who always winds up one step behind Murdock. But one guest doesn't fit in...a beautiful raven-haired dame named Meg Archer (Gail Patrick). She comes across as so aristocratic that we can't be sure if it's ice water in her veins or just the slow syrup of delayed gratification. And wouldn't you know it, murder shows up, too. Right in the middle of the party, when the flashbulbs are popping, a guy also gets popped. Not Nate, but his lawyer. And who immediately disappears? Yep, Meg vanishes even faster than a pair of straight dice at a crap game. She winds up at Kent's apartment with a story and a plea for help. It's not long before someone realizes that a picture Kent took at the party just might show the murderer, that Kent's former girlfriend wants some money, that Nate Girard is willing to pay big for what he says he has to have, that the cops think Nate is in the middle, that Meg has some sort of side deal, that Kent will go all out to help Meg, that...a lot keeps moving around in this mystery played with a light touch. Murder with Pictures is just what it is, a 69-minute programmer with a few good points, a plot that gets too complicated for its own good, and a production that never received the studio love that might have made it better. Among those good points is seeing Lew Ayres, who played the naive, sincere gun fodder in All Quiet on the Western Front, turn in a wise guy performance by channeling Chester Morris. He handles the role with some style. Ayres was a reliable, likable lead actor whose strong suit was decency. He became a pacifist after making All Quiet. With the Doctor Kildare series that started in 1938, Lew Ayres found himself a matinée idol. When Pearl Harbor was attacked and Ayres was drafted, he declared himself a conscientious objector. He was crucified in the press and his career vanished. He finally was granted his earlier request to join the Army Medical Corps. He served under fire in the Pacific and in New Guinea. After the war, when it became known he had served as a combat medic, he gradually began to get film offers but for seldom more than character roles. Ayres received an Oscar nomination for best actor for the doctor in Johnny Belinda. Just like Dr. Kildare, Ayres was a decent guy with the backbone to stand firm for his beliefs.

johnnyx-2 I wound up with this movie on one of those dubious £3.99 four-packs full of 'films you've never heard of'. And, well, on a slow Sunday, I treated myself to the experience...And, frankly, I was more than pleasantly surprised. Snappy banter plus strong performance from the leads made up for a transparent plot and lackluster 'action' sequences.Gangsters, reporters, dames in distress (and even a particularly dismal 'car chase scene') - all the traditional trappings of the 'noir' genre, but given a slightly humorous edge by Ayres' enjoyable performance as a wise-cracking reporter.