A Major Disappointment

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Snap quiz! Who is Verree Teasdale? A character created by Oscar Wilde? A P.G. Wodehouse flapper? Nope! She was a grand dame of the New York stage who gravitated to Hollywood just as sound came in, had a a good run playing sophisticated older women and married Adolphe Menjou. In "The Firebird," she's the wife of a politician whose next door neighbor, an actor, keeps trying to lure her to his apartment for a midnight escapade. When the actor is murdered, Verree is number one on police inspector C. Aubrey Smith's list of potential suspects. As the actor, Ricardo Cortez appears to be understudying a role that would have gone to Cary Grant if this wasn't a Radio Picture and had a higher budget. As Verree's uptight husband, Lionel Atwill seems almost surprised to be without his more frequent companions -- monsters and vampires. As for "The Firebird," its a reference to "The Firebird Suite," that wildly immoral pop tune (honest, that's how it's described in one scene)that Verree's young daughter spins on her gramophone.

Egotistical actor Herman Brandt (Ricardo Cortez) is murdered in his apartment one night. Suspicion falls on a member of the Pointer family that lives upstairs: John Pointer (Lionel Atwill) and wife Carola (Veree Teasdale), their daughter Marietta (Anita Louise), and the governess Josephine (Helen Trenholme). My principal reason for seeing this was Lionel Atwill. I love his horror films but it's always nice to see him stretch his acting chops in other types of movies. He's very good in this. Veree Teasdale's acting is overly theatrical at times. Cortez was one of the greats at playing slimy and here he showcases that. Lovely Anita Louise is quite good, particularly in the film's final scenes. Dorothy Tree was great fun as Brandt's ex-wife who loathed him. Dependable vet C. Aubrey Smith is his usual affable self as the police inspector. A nice little B murder mystery from Warner Bros.

This movie's title is almost entirely irrelevant. Ricardo Cortez portrays a suave musician in Vienna (memo to a previous IMDb reviewer: Vienna is not in Germany), who lures young maidens to his bachelor flat by offering to play Stravinsky's 'Firebird'. Of course, he's a cad with dozens of notches on his bedpost. Sooner or later, somebody is going to kill this guy. Sure enough, somebody does.This is one of those murder mysteries that features a subjective camera shot from the viewpoint of the murderer, so that the victim looks the murderer right in the eyes but we don't know the murderer's identity. We see Cortez welcoming someone into his digs, and a woman's arm enters the frame ... so we know the killer is a woman. And she's white, too. Other than that, her identity is a mystery.C. Aubrey Smith, more phlegmatic than usual, is the world-weary police inspector who's got to wade through the suspects. The prime suspect is Cortez's neighbour abovestairs, Verree Teasdale, whose lovely young daughter Anita Louise may have been ruined by Cortez. In this movie, Teasdale is married to Lionell Atwill, so she's got enough problems.I'll give this movie some credit. The solution to whodunnit was a genuine surprise to me. Likewise, her motive (yes, the killer IS a woman) was something I didn't expect. Unfortunately, her motive isn't very plausible either. Also, this movie starts out as a whodunnit, but C. Aubrey Smith's sleuth spends much less time trying to solve the murder than he spends pontificating on the morals of the younger generation and such. This movie is based on a play, and it shows: there's lots of talk and very little action.This movie was directed by William Dieterle, a brilliant craftsman who believed in astrology and numerology, and whose artistic decisions were often dictated by the horoscopes cast for him by his wife. She must have put her azimuth in the wrong house this time, because Dieterle's talents -- so amply demonstrated in many other films -- aren't much in evidence here. Several good actors try hard with weak material. I'll rate this movie just 4 out of 10.

You can tell that a lot of production money was thrown at THE FIREBIRD but for the life of me I can't tell why it's set in Germany. Ricardo Cortez (the corpse to be) plays a horndog actor with a shady past who lives in a high class apartment building. There's an angry ex-wife, an effeminate personal assistant that's in love with the corpse's Dachsund, and well heeled neighbors with a lovely daughter (Anita Louise) who fear for their reputation. C. Aubrey Smith, the 71-year old impeccable Englishman, plays the police inspector. Remember this is supposed to be set in 1934 Germany (what, no Nazis?). Except for the wiener dog, the apartment manager's pipe, beer swilling policeman and some German shop signs, you'd never know it. Not one stab at an accent between them. A standard whodunnit.