Fri 21 Oct 2011
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: ARSÈNE LUPIN (1932).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[2] Comments
ARSÈNE LUPIN. MGM, 1932. John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Karen Morley, John Miljan, Tully Marshall. Adapted from the stage play by Maurice Leblanc and Francis de Croisset. Director: Jack Conway.
John Barrymore plays Lupin and Lionel Barrymore is Inspector Guerchard, with Karen Morley playing a criminal who agrees to help Guerchard trap Lupin in exchange for her freedom.
There is some disagreement among, the various characters on the proper pronunciation of “Arsène,” with Lionel the must skillful at mispronouncing it, but this is a charming film climaxed by a spectacular theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.
Morley, predictably, falls in love with Lupin; the Lupin character is laundered in the final scene to provide a conventional ending, and the transition from play to movie is not always successful. But John Barrymore plays the gentleman master criminal with an ease and casualness that give the film an illusion of freshness and spontaneity, while Morley is a beautiful and elegant foil to the two brothers.
October 21st, 2011 at 8:16 pm
An enjoyable movie, but I’d have rather watched it with the ending intact. I taped my copy from TCM, but unfortunately the movie ran long or my programming of the machine was too short. Yipes!
October 21st, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Leblanc’s Lupin remains one of the few classic mystery book series I still enjoy reading. Especially when the great French master thief humiliates the British detective Herlock Sholmes.