The Mind Reader

(1933) Mind Reader DRAMA

Con artist and fake fortune teller, Chandra (Warren William) along with his sidekick, Frank (Allen Jenkins) comes to an emotional as well as ethical stumbling block as soon as he begins to fall in love and takes Sylvia (Constance Cummings) in as his personal secretary. Despite it's year, the interesting moments are the showcase of scams they pull which requires more than one person. And I also like the fact that the African American character, Sam (Clarence Muse) wasn't dumb nor degraded down as a second class citizen, it would've been nice if the film showed more of him.

I'm a real sucker for movies about fake psychics and occult scammers, and "The Mind Reader" makes for a very fine entry in that sparsely populated genre. Warren William really gets to muck it up as a skeevy huckster who makes his money as a traveling fortune teller. Always one one step ahead of the simple-minded authorities, he never stays long enough in one whistlestop town for his parlor tricks to get exposed. When he falls for Constance Cummings, he begins to seriously question some of his life choices.

Although the tone is rather jaunty compared to something like "The Spiritualist" or "Nightmare Alley", there are a few dramatic moments showing the moral peril and self-centeredness inherent to psychic swindling. William has one great dramatic moment where he breaks down on stage in Mexico, drunkenly abusing the crowd while showing a truly hideous side of his personality. It's one of his finer bits of acting. The film also looks great, with plenty of imaginative angles and vivid lighting that emphasize Chandra's crooked nature.

This early film is rarely seen these days. Thanks to TCM, we had the opportunity to watch it. As directed by Roy Del Ruth, the film tackles the problem of the itinerant con men running wild all over the country peddling home remedies and even serving as dentists to a naive public that were easily swindled.

At the center of the story, we see a man that discovers how to make a fast buck by giving readings to unsuspecting folks for a dollar. It's the cruelest of the scams because unsuspecting people put faith in the predictions these charlatans have to offer. We get to know the fate of one woman who comes back to tell Chandra how his reading turned to be a tragedy for her.

Warren William plays the great Chandra with charm. He is totally convincing as the person who has the solution for every problem, for a price. Constance Cummings is Sylvia, the young girl whose life is changed by Chandra. Allen Jenkins plays Chandra's assistant in one of his best roles. We get to see briefly Mayo Methot in the pivotal role of Jenny.

Warren William is "The Mind Reader" in this pre-code film also starring Constance Cummings and Allen Jenkins.

William is a snake oil salesman (a con artist) during the Depression, using his skills of persuasion to sell products. One day, his associate, Frank (Jenkins) is reading about mind readers and thinks it might be a great profession, so William becomes Chandra. He is very successful. When he meets the beautiful Sylvia (Cummings), he falls in love. After an unfortunate incident, he promises her that if she'll stay with him, he'll quit. But the con and the money are seductive.

This is an early talkie and very well directed by Roy del Ruth. Unlike some early talkies, it's not stagy and the actors don't have trouble with the dialogue rhythm. Often in these early films, there are big pauses in between lines, but not here.

Warren William is one of my favorites. He played these dark characters in silents and the early years of sound, and then we were able to hear his wonderful laugh and see his humor in films like the Perry Mason series (though he and the scripts weren't Erle Stanley Gardner's idea of Perry Mason), Satan Met a Lady, The Lone Wolf series, and others.

Constance Cummings was both beautiful and amazing, and she does a lovely job here. She deserved to be a bigger star, but she left Hollywood early on and moved with her husband to England, where she made some films and appeared in her husband's (Benn Levy) plays. When she was around 70, she appeared on Broadway in a play about a stroke victim, Wings, for which she won a Tony Award. This was a great opportunity to see her on film.

Interesting film, kind of a forerunner to "Nightmare Alley" in a way - those movie fortunetellers are always fakes.

What makes this especially entertaining is how it pretends to take itself ever so seriously, but subtly and deliberately, not quite convincingly enough. Humour is often funnier when it's not that obvious and you have to discover it hidden in a serious drama like this.

In this fairly short picture, Warren William has tremendous fun hamming up his moustache twiddling loveable rogue character to a hundred and ten percent. You can't be certain whether it's because you can really sense his own personal enjoyment at playing this role or whether you're being fooled by some good acting but whatever it is, that ninety year old enjoyment is infectious. Although you'll probably forget you've seen this in a few weeks (to be honest, it's not that memorable), you can't help but enjoy watching it.

Since this is a First National B-feature, without the constraints of conforming to the Warner's 'A-picture' conventions, Roy Del Ruth, possibly WB's top director at the time also enjoys this lack of restriction by experimenting with clever shots, wacky camera angles and atmospheric lighting. This makes the result both fun and interesting to watch but it's not just the direction and Warren William which make this picture worth seeing ninety years after it was made. It's actually a good little story with a great snappy script so and if you like 1930s, blue-collar, American speak, you'll find this just swell! Its script benefits from one of the writers being Wilson Mizner. Who? - he was one of America's most celebrated writers having had what might be described as a very eventful life (and yes, movies have been made about him) or as one of his contemporaries said: America's most fascinating outlaw. His street-level wit, nurtured by his own plentiful life experiences add a certain spice to this story which although fairly engaging anyway is made much tastier by the magic of his wordweaving.

Overall, although this is nothing that special with no deep message or even very shallow message, it is reasonably entertaining .