Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A Brilliant Conflict

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Ralph Bellamy stars as 'Inspector Trent'--a detective who is trying to solve a murder. However, his method of solving the case seems to be to let the murderer kill off all the other possible so that by the process of elimination he's found the killer! In the very first scene, a guy announces to Trent that he's about to be murdered--and he is! Then, the houseboy appears to be connected to the crime and he's stabbed in the back right before the very eyes of Trent!! At the end, when Bellamy discovers the killer, he deliberately gives the guy ample opportunity to kill himself--thus saving the tax payers from having to pay to incarcerate him!! This is all pretty funny, as the case is apparently being told to an up and coming cop who wants an advancement--and his boss tells him how Trent so masterfully solved the case as an example of great detective work!!! Thank God other 'great detectives' don't work this way!! Fortunately, despite this weird plot element, the solution to the crime is actually really cool and makes this B-mystery well worth seeing. Good acting, a genuinely interesting mystery and a relatively ineffectual detective make this one to watch. Plus, it's nice to see Bellamy in a film where he doesn't lose the girl in the end...which seemed to happen all too often through the 1930s and early 40s!

**SPOILERS** Whodunit with an unusual multiracial cast for that time-1933-with African/American Fred Snowflake Toons as the taxi driver and Otto Yamaoka as the Arnold's Japanese houseboy Kono. In fact some ten years later Yamaoka was rounded up with some 150,000 fellow Japanese Americans and put in an internment camp for the duration of WWII as a possible dangerous enemy alien despite him being a native born American citizen.In the film "Smiling" Ralph Bellamy playing the part of police inspector Trent is called to the Arnold Mansion in Forest Lake NY to check out threats against Edward Arnold's, William Jeffreys, life. Arnold feels that someone is out to get him to fore-fill a third generation Arnold family curse that has him slated to die before the clock strikes midnight! Sure enough as a storm hits the area around the midnight hour Arnold suddenly drops dead right in front of Inspt. Trent and some half dozen witnesses including his personal doctor David Marsh, Arthur Pierson!It's soon determined by the local coroner that Aronld didn't die of fright as at first thought but of an injection of cyanide potassium. With Dr. Mrash giving Arnold an injection for his heart condition just hours before his sudden death he becomes the #1 suspect in his murder. Inspt. Trent for some reason feels that Dr. Marsh is innocent in Arnold's murder because it was so obvious to him that he was set up to take the blame for it! Inspt. Trent concentrates on those at the mansion at the time of Arnold's death which included his best friend the mysterious John Fry, Clude Gillingwater. It was Fry back in 1918, in far off China, who saved Arnold's life from a rare and tropical disease. There's also the mystery of the late Edward Arnold's live in secretary Janet Holt, June Collyer, who as it later turned out was the reason, without her having a clue about it, for Arnold's murder. ***SPOILERS*** As Inspt. Trent starts to uncover the mystery behind Arnold's murder he zeros in on Arnold houseboy Kono who not only knows who was behind his "Master's" murder but what was the instrument of murder that he used to kill him. There's also the late Arnold's shyster lawyer Howard B. Smith, Bradley Page, and John Fry's estranged wife Marvis, Betty Blythe. The two are involved in trying to get their hands on Janet's late moms diary locked in the Arnold mansion's safe that reveals the true reasons for Arnold's infatuation with both her and her daughter that may have well been the real reason for his murder. A little on the complicated side "Before Midnight" does keep the audience as well as Inspt. Trent guessing to who murdered Arnold who as it turned out was someone as close to him as his very shadow. The surprise ending came so unexpectedly that it even took the cool and collective Inspt. Trent by surprise even though he was the one who figured it out!

The film is told in flashback by a chief of police to a detective looking for a promotion. The Arnold case, he says is the sort of case that when solved warrants a promotion. Ralph Bellamy is Inspector Trent of the New York Detective Bureau. Called to Forest Lake and the Arnold residence, Trent is asked to look into a possible murder in the offing. It seems Arnold is a superstitious man and any time blood was found under the portrait on an ancestor the head of the house hold dies the next day. Time is running out. As Arnold shows Trent the second part of the superstition, a clock that stops a minute before the murder, the clock stops, a window bursts open and Arnold dies.A complicated and pre-code murder mystery this is almost a straight forward police procedural as we watch Trent try to solve the case. Bellamy plays Trent in a no nonsense hard boiled style that is atypical of mysteries of this sort. Of course there is no way to know whats going on since some of the goings on are so convoluted that you can't figure it out unless they tell you. Still its a good movie who's complication keep you interested. Certainly not a great film, it is a very good one that bears a second viewing just so you can see what you missed.Definitely worth seeing.6.5 out out of 10 rounded up to 7 out of 10 for IMDb purposes

It's a well-directed mystery with more twists than a pretzel. This movie times in at just over an hour, and had to be filled out with a prologue, epilogue and long takes of Ralph Bellamy thinking to bring it up to that. Carefully directed with full Old Dark House look and feel by long-time director Lambert Hillyer -- he had directed William S. Hart to stardom but had retreated, as had so many, to the B list when sound came in -- there's only one flaw in the mystery plot: the detective has the motive before the audience does.This was one of a short and probably unofficial series of movies starring Ralph Bellamy as Inspector Trent of the New York Detective Bureau. He is rather straightforward in his characterization, which probably explains why in another couple of years he was relegated to the role of Second Man in the movies, even if he could act up a storm when given the opportunity. Still, the story is the thing in this movie. The mystery will probably stump you and it's only an hour.