BEHIND THAT CURTAIN (1929)

Hilary Galt is holding dirt on two men: noted explorer Colonel John Beetham (information about illegal financial dealings which Beetham insists is false) and playboy Eric Durand (a philandering gold digger who wants to marry Sir George Mannering's niece Eve). The night before Mannering is about to collect the dirt about Durand, Galt is murdered in his office, some papers are stolen, and Galt's body is found wearing a pair of Chinese slippers which were a gift from Beetham. As Scotland Yard inspector Frederick Bruce investigates, Mannering realizes he'll never get the evidence he needs against Durand, after which Eve spills the news that she and Durand got married in secret the night before. Beetham comes under suspicion; Bruce is sure it can't be him and continues working on the case. Months later, Durand and Eve are living unhappily in India. He's having a fling with Nuna, the native housemaid, and is being blackmailed by the night watchman at the Galt building who figured out he was the killer. Eve returns from shopping one day to find Durand and Nuna in a post-coital haze, and later when she meets Beetham, who is crossing Asia in a caravan, she runs off with him. Bruce catches up with Beetham and finds out that the slippers worn by Galt had actually belonged to Eve. For her part, Eve leaves the caravan, now a possible suspect in the murder, and heads to San Francisco where she gets a job as an elevator operator. Eventually, Beetham, Bruce and Durand all wind up there as well and, with a little help from local detective Charlie Chan, the case is solved.

This is usually cited as the earliest Chan movie still in existence, but oddly, Chan only appears in the last fifteen minutes and has little to do, though he does get an amusing scene in which he scolds a young saxophone-playing man who replies, good-naturedly, “Hotsi-totsi, Mr. Chan!” (Pictured at left.) He also plays a crucial role in the climax. The novel this is based on, by Earl Derr Biggers, the third of his six Chan books, is completely centered on Chan so it's strange that the adaptation would erase him. The main story is the same though the novel plays out over the period of several years, with a second murder case and a central romantic couple not in the film. It also takes place entirely in San Francisco with some backstory flashbacks which become the bulk of this movie. Taken on its own as just a melodrama, it's tolerable—though as an early sound film, I imagine modern viewers will be bored by its slow pace, the draggy delivery of some of the dialogue, and the lack of a background score. I liked Warner Baxter and Lois Moran as Beetham and Eve, and Philip Strange is effective as the decadent villain Durand. A Chinese American actor who went by the name E.L. Park plays Chan; he is rather stiff and he never made another movie, so it's hard to judge how good he would have been if he'd been in other Chan films. Boris Karloff has a small role as Beetham's manservant, but he gets a nicely portentous line: "The desert gives, and the desert takes away." Another line, "Fear and love make their own destiny," spoken by Bruce (Gilbert Emery), sounds good though I'm not sure what it means. At ninety minutes, it does drag in places, but I think classic-era film buffs will enjoy this, though if you're looking for a Charlie Chan mystery, this isn't it—it also isn't really a mystery as we know all along who was behind the murder. The title is just a metaphor about finding what's hidden, and it's used more effectively in the novel. Pictured at top are Lois Moran and Philip Strange. [DVD]