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William K. Howard was given the task of turning a popular radio serial into a movie, and succeeded. A carefully-written script that actually paid attention to the way cases are tried was the first step. Some great support, particularly Skeets Gallegher and the great Zasu Pitts helps. A restless camera helps keep up speed, and some great sets -- particularly the nightclub set -- make this a fine movie, even if the leads, who became lovers more than twenty years later, had no memory of working together on this one.I wish to call your attention, if you ever have the chance to see this movie -- it is very rare and the one print I saw was a 16 mm. print, blurry as you would expect -- to the swish cuts. A swish cut is when the camera starts to pan away, then the illusion of high speed movement starts and when the camera slows down it is panning into a new shot -- maybe a quarter second elapses. It adds tremendous excitement to a sequence and Howard uses a lot of them here.Unhappily, a lot of editing techniques for shot changes were on their ways out. By about 1935, Hollywood had settled on the now-standard techniques, except for a few movies which attempt to evoke the older movies. A loss to film grammar, but what can we do about it now, except to enjoy these techniques when we see them?
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