Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Boring

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The team of Kay Francis and William Powell had been established at Paramount studios with a handful of pre-code films made in the years prior to their arrival at Warner Brothers in 1932. Long before Powell established a teaming with the dark haired Myrna Loy, he had the equally dark-haired, widow peaked Francis, and ironically, their two best films were their last. "Jewel Robbery" and "One Way Passage" remain two of the greatest pre-code films of the early sound era, with "One Way Passage" a classic tear-jerker that even got a Carol Burnett spoof and "Jewel Robbery" a great companion piece with another film that Francis made that year at Paramount, the elegant Ernst Lubitsch comedy "Trouble in Paradise". While "Trouble in Paradise" is often named among the best comedies of the 1930's, "Jewel Robbery" was nearly forgotten until an appreciation of these films exploded through frequent showings on TCM."Jewel Robbery" shows Kay Francis at her most winsome, a fun-loving but bored socialite, married to an older man (Henry Kolker) whom she complains about having gout, but longing for adventure, she had better be careful about what she wishes for. On a routine shopping trip to her favorite jewelers, she is present when Powell makes his entrance and holds her and several other customers hostage. Powell, however, is as sophisticated and urbane as the customers, and deals with the nervous shop owners and other customers by offering them a special cigarette which immediately calms them down. That cigarette, never mentioned by its real name, proceeds as Powell says it will, to make them sleepy and later very hungry. Later, the store manager smokes it and begins to think he's Napoleon. Now if that ain't the "pot" calling the kettle black....Excited by this brief escapade, Francis isn't thrilled however by the theft of her own jewelry which she later discovers hidden in her safe! Powell makes his presence known, and their love making imminently follows. But Francis is obviously not going to give up her baroness title without a struggle, and this leads to her plot to have a rest away from all of this so she can continue her liaison with Powell without being caught. Socialite pal Helen Vinson becomes her confidante, while the naive Kolker never suspects a thing. Clarence Wilson, the eagle-beaked character actor who always played skin-flint bankers or unlikable authority figures, has a ball with his part which shows him higher than a kite, bringing on major laughter.To add to the comedy, there's Hardie Albright as Powell's right-hand man and Ruth Donnelly as the distracted maid. Francis gives one of her most light-hearted performances, squealing in delight over a bubble bath and even giving a few asides to the audience as if winking at them for being in the know of her secret intrigues. Powell is perfectly cast as the elegant scoundrel, making him so likable that you really want to see him getting away with all his nefarious deeds. This is what makes pre-code cinema so much fun is that these really likable characters got away with sin, and nobody judged them because they really rooted them on.

There isn't one sub-standard frame in this delightful romp; it oozes sophistication and could have been made a good decade later than it was. It doesn't get better than Kay Francis and William Powell - and the very next year Powell would team up with Myrna Loy for the first in the Thin Man franchise - who both walk on air through this soufflé which is perfect in all departments starting, of course, with the script by Sampson Raphaelson, albeit adapted from yet another - Liliom, The Shop Around The Corner - Hungarian playwright, through the direction of William Diertle to the brilliant playing of Powell and Francis with first-class support from the rest of the cast. A gem of a jewel robbery.

Decadent, frothy, amoral and deliciously funny -- sometimes to a rolling-in-the-aisles degree -- this film is likely to make your jaw drop with the delightfully brazen fantasy of it all: there's a real Viennese lightness to the tale of the Countess who longs to become an honest adventuress and the gentleman thief with a /modus operandi/ so civilised that his victims are caught completely off-balance -- it almost makes sense. (I particularly loved the gramophone in a hatbox that he carries everywhere with him, and the accomplice who deferentially presents him with a case containing the gun for use in the hold-up!) The dialogue demonstrates, not for the first time, that suggestion is far sexier than explicit grunt-and-heave, and the costumes are Hollywood fantasy writ large for the audience's delight. Suavity naturally rules, irony is writ large, and my only complaint was that I inadvertently guessed one of the plot twists a few minutes before the heroine did, thus losing the pleasure of the surprise. I suspect that the Middle-European setting in a famously frivolous Vienna allowed the script to dare even further than would otherwise have been permitted, but basically if you think you hear an innuendo and it's funny then it's probably entirely intentional...My main fear is that if I ever get to watch this again (probably unlikely, alas) it can't possibly live up to my memories of seeing it tonight, with a full house rocking with laughter and a freshly-restored print on the big screen.

"Jewel Robbery" is a movie made by grown-ups, written for grown-ups and starring grown-ups. This one almost qualifies as a costumer as everyone is in 'evening dress', this being 1932. It aired on TCM the other morning and I can't tell you what a refreshing break it was from what passes for modern comedy.Do you like William Powell? Here he was never more debonair and urbane, not even in his Philo Vance pictures or as Nick Charles. Are you familiar with Kay Francis? She was so - what's the word - 'feminine' will do. Yes, that's perfect. And together they were perfect in this Pre-Code comedy which keeps you waiting for the next exchange of delicious dialogue.He is a gentleman thief and she is a bored wife looking for excitement, adventure, etc. The story is clever enough but the script is the thing here. Truly, they don't make films like this anymore. Adam Sandler, you have no clue, son. This is sophisticated stuff.'Jewel Robbery' is only the 2nd picture I have given a 9 to, and it was richly deserved.