The Firebird

Womanizing matinee idol Ricardo Cortez is murdered in his apartment. Homicide detective C. Aubrey Smith soon limits his suspects to people in the building.

It's not a particularly difficult mystery to solve for the audience, so director William Dieterle fills it in with interesting performances. Lionel Atwill as a retired bureaucrat seems softer and feebler than in any other role; perhaps it is the mustache. Verree Teasdale, as his wife seems about twenty years older than her real-life 30, but she always seemed to play women a bit on the matronly side. Anita Louise, as their daughter, seems small and hesitant. And so forth, with a cast that includes Dorothy Tree, Hobart Cavanaugh, Etienne Giradot, and Skippy. Ernest Haller's photography seems a bit intermittently soft, as if there is some problem with the print, but that might have been a deliberate decision.