Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent but underrated film

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Blistering performances.

Scotland Yard inspector Dudley Digges opens up a wooden cabinet next to his desk...and turns on the television set. The cricket match is on and the star player is fan favorite A.J. Raffles. The inspector and his colleagues have just been discussing the baffling case of "the Amateur Cracksman," a clever thief who leaves a signed note at the scene of each crime. Little do the Scotland Yard men realize that Raffles and the Amateur Cracksman are one and the same--celebrity by day, burglar by night. David Niven is excellent as Raffles, that adventurous character who decides to hang up his secret life, finds it necessary to do one last job, and feels the pressure build as his cover is slowly chipped away. Pensive, charming, sly, quick-thinking....it's a great role for Niven. Olivia de Havilland is fine as the socialite who loves the dashing Raffles but begins to wonder about his puzzling behavior. (However, her top billing just under Niven does not reflect her actual role in the picture; the two main roles belong to Niven and Digges.) Dudley Digges is lots of fun as the steadfast inspector who doesn't miss much. He follows his suspects down to one of those large country houses where Dame May Whitty's jewels are a temptation to more than one would-be crook. The plot is really nothing much but it's certainly entertaining watching these characters watch each other. Bonus: Laurel and Hardy fans will enjoy seeing the great James Finlayson as a cab driver. And a note: Apparently the first televised cricket match was in 1938. Not sure if Scotland Yard offices really had TV yet.

RAFFLES is something of a so-so screen adaptation of the famous literary character, a notorious safe cracker and jewel thief here envisaged as David Nivan's charming cad. This 1939 version is a virtual remake of the 1930 film with Ronald Colman, and it follows that film's plot quite strictly.What I found about this movie is that I didn't connect with the material as much as I had hoped. The characters go through the motions rather than living off the screen and everything is dealt with in a matter-of-fact way. Niven can do little with his character other than show up and act typically charming, and the best performer is none other than Olivia De Havilland, who shines as the romantic lead. The rest is straightforward, and not particularly memorable.

I'm an great admirer of the Raffles books. E W Hornung was a better writer than the more famous Arthur Conan Doyle, his more famous brother in law. The stories were very well constructed,characters well-defined and deserved classics. This is a thin lazy adaptation, combining of several of the stories losing a great deal of what was important. It is though a scene by scene and largely word for word re-make of the superior 1930 Ronald Colman version.One, and perhaps the, reason for the remake seemed obvious to me. The 1930 version was too steamy and too suggestive for 1939. When Ronald Colman courteously escorts the large and elderly Lady Melrose to her bedroom and wishes her goodnight, Lady Melrose affects to mishear and Colman repeats with great emphasis the finality of NIGHT!. It is made very clear from their expressions that Lady Melrose was hoping Colman would join her. It think it was not perhaps until the 1970s that Hollywood would again dare suggest such a thing. Colman's love interest is clearly passionately besotted with him and would do anything for him. It was realism but of a kind which Hollywood would I think never portray again. Firstly Hayes Code prudery and later the box office obligation to show women as heroic and independent.The adaptation removes Bunny's connection with Raffles (formerly a junior at Raffles public (fee paying) school and the odd obligations this entailed. Bunny in this version has little purpose. Raffles was the ultimate professional thief and corrupts Bunny and in the process teaches him (and the reader) his philosophy of life and crime. His cricket was a calculated necessary high profile front. Raffles lived alone without a servant - his night time arrivals and departures, often in disguise made that obligatoryAs other reviewers have said, Niven makes a good job of his part but only Olivia de Havillands loveliness makes the film at all watchable.The best screen rendering of the Raffles was a 1975 British TV series - again combining different stories but a seamlessly invisible adaptation. The interiors were those of a wealthy single gentleman of 1890s London - based on gentleman's clubs. Raffles, Bunny and McKenzie were authentically true to the books. It did Hornung honour. BBC Radio has done two versions (at least), first a reading and second a full production complete with distinctive signature tune.Thanks once again to Talking Pictures TV for screening these famous early Raffles versions. Otherwise I would never have known of them.

If ever there was a film that should have been a lot better, it is the 1940 version of "Raffles" - excellently cast is David Niven as the Gentleman cracksman, and with Olivia de Havilland (at her loveliest) as his girl-friend Gwen, with two excellent supporting players in Dame May Whitty and Dudley Digges. Lasting only just over an hour, it misses a wonderful opportunity to make something really exciting and suspenseful, but on those scores it fails. The predictability of it is a real let-down, and really the talent of the two main stars are wasted - Miss de Havilland has absolutely nothing to do except sit around and look gorgeous - she must have been forced by Warners to do this on loan out, because it followed so soon after her big success in "Gone With The Wind".