Very best movie i ever watch

Simply A Masterpiece

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

One of the earliest films in the Sarah Keate "series" (though each film has a different cast and setting), "While The Patient Slept" resembles a lot the Hildegarde Withers films of the same period, especially in the love-hate relationship between the male detective and the female nurse here - schoolteacher there. In some of the films Keate (also called Keating) actually solves the case herself, in others she does practically no detective work; in this one, she falls somewhere in between. Despite some fairly snappy dialogue and a large cast (including the doll-like Patricia Ellis) where everyone is a suspect, this film slows down at times; however, it is worth your patience for a (literally) last-minute surprise, just when you thought you had it all wrapped up. Allen Jenkins' comic relief is sometimes too loud but occasionally funny. **1/2 out of 4.

This is a good old-fashioned Thirties mystery, with comic turns from Guy Kibbee, Aline MacMahon, and Allen Jenkins doing his usual Sheldon Leonard- like one-step-behind sidekick cop. It's based on an early novel by Mignon G. Eberhart, who had a knack for implausible plotting that didn't matter because the action spun everything along at a nice clip. Nice to see Kibbee taking the spotlight, even if in a B movie, because he was such a stalwart supporting player, a familiar face in so many movies of the era. He and MacMahon play well off each other, even creating a bit of a romance, though MacMahon's Nurse Sarah Keate isn't quite as acerbic and witty as the character in the novel. However, the movie has its own charm, spiced with a bit of wackiness, and is a pleasant way to while away a little more than one hour.

This is among the better entries in the comedy/mystery genre popular in the 1940s. No one liked the person murdered. Many people had reason to do him or her in. All are assembled in creepy surroundings.Apart from a plot that's easy and logical, what sets this apart is Aline MacMahon. She plays a nurse who happens to be in the house and who helps the police solve the crime.MacMahon was unique in Hollywood history. Though only in her thirties here, she was already playing an old maid. Yet she had an occasional fling at glamor roles. And she was an exceptionally good actress, with a haunting beauty.Her rather heavy-lidded eyes seem to bore right through her co-players, here as elsewhere. ZaSu Pitts had a somewhat parallel career. But at least Erich Von Stroheim saw her as a beauty and a great actress.Maybe MacMahon really couldn't have done it. But I think she had the potential for far greater roles than she was given. As strange as this probably sounds, I can see her, decades later, as the tragic Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." (She would surely have been better than Katharine Hepburn, an actress, I often liked, in that role.)

When is a Nurse Keating film not a Nurse Keating film? When it's a Hildegarde Withers film. If you liked this one, you'll love the first four of the Hildegarde flicks from RKO. 'While the Patient Slept' is taken from the first Hildegarde story, 'Penguin Pool Murder'. Penguin Pool's plot is different (except for being a humorous murder mystery, but the main characters are the same, and while penguins are the trademark of author Stuart Palmer, here they've substituted a green elephant.I now have a copy of this movie, and that completes both my Nurse Keate and Hildegarde Withers collections. Speaking of rip-offs, if you like the 'Thin Man' Series, try "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" and "Star Of Midnight," both with William Powell, Bradford with Jean Arthur and Midnight with Ginger Rogers. RKO got Powell on a loan-out and took full advantage of it.