User reviews

Behind That Curtain is based on the third Charlie Chan novel written by Earl Derr Biggers. The book was fun pulp with Charlie outsmarting three rival detectives in solving the murder of a Scotland Yard detective and in turn solving two 15 year old mysteries.

The film, however, is interested in the two 15 year old mysteries and re-works the plot, so the film ends up being about Biggers' back story rather than the Chan story. Fox must not have been confident in the Chan character, perhaps because this was the first real year of sound film or they felt the audience would be more interested in the lovers and not a Chinese detective. Indeed, there is little romance in the book and the film takes liberties in changing 3 non-romantic characters in the book into a love triangle in the film.

It is rather sloppily done and the film really would be of no interest at all today, if it did not have small appearances by Boris Karloff and the Charlie Chan character. It is unfortunately a typical early sound effort and is cinematically uninteresting. Therefore the plot, which is not a mystery as the killer is revealed in the beginning, is all about the overdrawn lovers. It was probably even boring in 1929, but it qualifies as a curio today and should be viewed as such. It is interesting to see E.L. Park play Chan, albeit for five minutes and Karloff looks as menacing as ever. What cruel irony though, that no one can find "The Chinese Parrot", by the brilliant Paul Leni, nor the 4 missing Warner Oland Chans, and this is the one missing Chan that was found!!! Fate works in strange ways.

The first half of "Behind That Curtain" is a excellent example of the drawbacks of early talkies. Except for Warner Baxter, all the actors indulge in over-enunciation to the extent that they often sound as if English is not their first language. The camera is nailed down in one long interior scene after another with the occasional mike boom shadow crossing faces. The second half, however, is a strong improvement. The lead actress learns how to properly emote and there are a number of excellent exteriors in the desert and in downtown San Francisco of 1929. Also livening events in the last half are cameo appearances by Boris Karloff and the character Charlie Chan, both in their first talkie appearances. Chan is played for once by an actual Asian person and Karloff has a good scene where he has to pretend to be mute, giving a glimpse of his later masterful work as Frankenstein' monster. He is also given the horrible line, "the desert gives and the desert takes away" but imparts a wonderful sense of mystery to it.

Author Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933) was among America's most popular writers of the 1910s and 1920s and many of his works, such as 'Seven Keys to Baldpate', were translated to stage and screen with great success. About 1919 Biggers encountered stories about Hawaii's celebrated Chang Apana (1887-1933), a police officer of Chinese heritage who was noted for his fearlessness in dealing with criminals engaged in the opium trade. Apana, who carried a whip as his weapon of choice, was more noted for courage than detective skills--but he proved the inspiration for Charlie Chan.

Between 1925 and 1932 Biggers wrote six Chan novels. HOUSE WITHOUT A KEY and THE Chinese PARROT were filmed as silents in 1926; the first sound film to feature Chan was BEHIND THAT CURTAIN. But although it is generally based on the Biggers novel, the film takes a very strange direction: instead of presenting the mystery novel that Biggers wrote, it dispenses with mystery and presents the story of a runaway wife as a melodrama pure and simple, and Chan (played here by E.L. Park) is only a cameo role tacked on at the film's finish.

The cast sports several notable actors of the era, most particularly Warner Baxter, who had a distinguished career, and it offers an early and very brief role to Boris Karloff in his pre-FRANKENSTEIN era. But the cast struggles a great deal with the new technology of sound and they read as stiff and mannered. The direction and cinematography are only serviceable, and even for an early sound film BEHIND THAT CURTAIN feels extremely slow and heavy-handed.

BEHIND THAT CURTAIN is not presently available to the home market in the form of a studio release, nor is it likely to be so at any time in the near future. Although it is generally credited as "The First Sound-Era Charlie Chan Film," it is not really a part of the series that would become so popular between 1931 and 1942. Hardcore Chan fans will want to see the film at least once, but once will be more than enough.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This 1929 film is included on Charlie Chan Volume 3 as part of the complete history of Chan's character at Fox. For that reason it is good to have it. Viewing it, however, is another matter entirely. It is a great example of a bad early talkie in almost every category except cinematography. Fox used sound-on-film versus vitaphone, thus their early talkies don't have that static claustrophobic quality other 1928 and 1929 talkies have.

However the dialogue in many ways is held over from the silents as is the acting. At one point Warner Baxter is declaring his love to the leading lady by repeating "I love you! I love you! I love you". In the words of Singin' in the Rain, did someone get paid to write this dialogue? The overacting is unbelievable and the speech is tortuously slow.

The point of interest for most of us watching this film, the first appearance of Charlie Chan in a Fox film, doesn't take up much screen time. He appears near the beginning to identify a crucial piece of evidence and for a few minutes during the end. The murderer is identified almost at the beginning of the film and most of the time is taken up by a poorly acted love triangle tale. This is not the first appearance of Warner Oland in the title role, though. That doesn't occur for another two years. This film is only for hardcore Charlie Chan fans the same way that "An Old Spanish Custom" is for Buster Keaton fans.

An international orientalizing romance mystery from the pen of Earl Derr Biggers, author of the Charlie Chan mysteries. Chan is not really in this movie, except indirectly—instead there is a British-explorers-in-the-East theme, India and Persia and Tehran and pith helmets. Eve Mannering (Lois Moran) has married the wrong man, Durand (Philip Strange), who is a bounder and who has killed an agent, Hillary Galt, to prevent Eve's uncle from finding out. A watchman, blackmailing him, writes to Eve in India, and she confronts her husband, who hurts her and acts threatening, so she disappears into the desert with dashing, dependable Col Beetham (Warner Baxter) who has been longing for her all his life. Meanwhile, the urbane Scotland Yard detective Sir Frederick Bruce (Gilbert Emery) pursues the mystery with a clue provided by Chan, and the story winds up in San Francisco will all wrinkles ironed out. A very early sound movie, this one is marred not so much by the spotty sound recording as by the stagy acting style: thrilling and plummy tones ("ohhhhhhhhh Erik!") from Moran and Baxter. She's sometimes quite winsome, and Boris Karloff has a tiny part as Beetham's oriental servant. Later films focus on Chan, but not this one. Interesting use of title phrase, first to indicate why explorers explore, and then to preface Beetham's film-illustrated lecture at the denouement.

This is a globe-hopping film that begins in England, then moves to India, Iran and finally San Francisco. The story involves a sociopathic murderer who kills someone and then marries a nice girl. Once married, he treats her like dirt and cheats on her. She puts up with it until she discovers that he was a murderer. Then most of the film consists of her trying desperately to avoid him as well as scandal if the secret were be revealed.

This is the earliest Charlie Chan film known to be in existence and it is absolutely nothing like the later films--nothing. Apart from the name "Charlie Chan", there is no similarities to the later exceptional series.

Back in 1929, films were often a bit stilted and overly melodramatic. Because the studios weren't used to using sound, the actors tended to remain very stationary (due to poor sound equipment) and the dialog sounded more like plays than movies. I accept this and tend to rate these early talkies with this in mind. However, even keeping this in mind, BEHIND THAT CURTAIN is still a dreadful film--even for 1929. The main problem is not how constricted the actors were due to the sound equipment but how gosh-darn awful the dialog was. In fact, I would have to say that the love scene in the desert might just be the absolute worst love scene I have ever seen and heard--it was THAT overly melodramatic and stagy as well as laughable. I truly believe that most high school actors could do a better job today.

In addition to horrible dialog, the movie suffered from being way too slow--and the first half in particular crawled at a snail's pace. Later, despite the horrid dialog and acting the film did pick up a bit--but certainly not enough to make it even passable entertainment! I think the biggest problem is that the film clearly shows those involved with the movie weren't used to talking pictures. However, my complaints weren't just about the wretched dialog and pacing, but also the acting and direction. For example, the film starred Warner Baxter who was an exceptional actor. He was famous not just during the silent era but in sound pictures like the Crime Doctor series and such excellent films as PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND and KIDNAPPED. I loved how he played such realistic and likable "everyman" characters, but here in BEHIND THAT CURTAIN he was a simpering idiot who overdid the love scenes--making him one of the biggest liabilities in the film. The female lead, Lois Moran was perhaps even worse. The only actor who came off well (very well, actually), was Gilbert Emery as the Scotland Yard inspector.

One reviewer pointed out that the only good element was the cinematography, though I would differ. While it was exceptional seeing the sound outdoor shots of the caravan (for 1929 getting this right was VERY tough), all too often the camera was static. At one point it was even laughable, as the scene began with just the tops of the characters' heads showing--like the camera should have been several feet lower. This was because the couple were about to stand and instead of moving the camera or using a cut, they just left the camera on and created a very awkward and sloppy scene.

Now as for Charlie Chan, he was only a bit player who appeared in a very limited capacity in the last 12 minutes of the movie. Surprisingly, he was actually played by an Asian--something you'd never see in the 30s-50s. However, this isn't all positive as E.L. Park had the charisma and charm of a bag of lint. They simply gave this actor nothing to do--making him just a glorified errand boy for Emery. Also, Chan oddly was NOT a Hawaiian-based detective--instead serving in Chinatown in San Francisco. Also, Mr. Park didn't look as Chinese as Warner Oland (who was a Swede)--looking more like a native Hawaiian (though with a Korean name). Chan was supposed to be a Hawaiian but of Chinese descent. Because of these inconsistencies and a thankless part, the "Chanophiles" out there will no doubt find all this very disappointing.

In conclusion, the plot wasn't bad but due to horrid acting, dialog and direction this is one supposedly lost film that might just as well as have remained lost!

Also, in a small role is Boris Karloff. While it's not a huge role, this excellent actor acquitted himself well in the role of a devoted servant. It was nice to see him in a pre-Frankenstein role.

As others have noted, this film is very dull. This is largely due to the extremely slow delivery of actor Gilbert Emery, who plays Sir Frederic Bruce of Scotland Yard. You can almost sense the impatience of the other actors whenever he's onscreen. If you're only curious about Charlie Chan, skip to the last 10 or 15 minutes.

According to THE FILMS OF BORIS KARLOFF, by Richard Bojarski, this was released in both sound and silent versions (a common practice during the early years of sound films). It would be interesting to see if the silent version, running at a faster film speed, is less dull.

Sir George Mannering disapproves of the relationship of his daughter Eve and Eric Durand to a point where he hires Hilary Galt to investigate Durand's previous activities. Galt is found murdered and Eve announces to her father that she and Eric eloped and they will be moving to Egypt, devastating Sir George and American explorer Col. John Beetham, who is infatuated with Eve. Scotland Yard inspector, Sir Frederick Bruce, believes Durand had a hand in the murder of Galt, and tracks him down in Egypt, while in the meantime, Beetham meets up with Eve in Egypt, she runs away from him (its been implied that Durand has been hot-n-heavy with the maid), but then Durand goes after her to prevent Eve from telling the police what she knows about Galt's murder. If you are looking forward to this film as a Charlie Chan or Boris Karloff fan, you might be disappointed considering both have very little impact or to do in the story. The movie could use a better mystery angle, but the movie is faithful to the style of the Biggers books (romantic plot, with Charlie Chan as the secondary character solving the mystery). The performances and production are stale, but the fact that its 1929, with the emphasis on the movie being a talkie must be considered. Still director Cummings should have informed Philip Strange that melodrama was dead by this time. Rating, 3.

Hey, it's an old movie in a bygone style but I took it for what it was and had a good time watching. Being of English heritage may have helped. Eve, damn it, I love you! Fun! Nice to see Boris Karloff too and some nice location shots.

This is an early example of the talking film. The delivery of the lines and emotions seem to be in slow motion. I am not sure if this was shot as a silent film as well. I tend to believe it was because much of the acting is done with eyes and face.

Overall it is faithful to the plot line of the book, but characters have been removed and that lessens the "mystery" of the film. We know "who done it" about 30 minutes into the picture.

Boris Karloff has a small role as a servant and Charlie Chan is seen even less (somewhere around the 42 minute mark).

For film enthusiasts only. The regular "tv mentality" person won't be able to sit through it.

When Fox decided to make "Behind That Curtain," the studio picked as leads Warner Baxter, Lois Moran and Gilbert Emery. Of the three, Emery's role was the most important, since his actions kept the story moving to its eventual outcome in San Francisco. Although the scriptwriters gave Gilbert Emery terrible lines for his part as an upper class Englishman, Emery can take all the credit for his strange pseudo-British accent as he slowly enunciates every word of dialogue, pausing at every chance to lend gravity to the moronic dialogue. At about the 80 minute mark, Emery's character discusses a plan with Charlie Chan of the SFPD. In one exchange, both actors talked in exactly the same way, as if they memorized their dialogue phonetically. Unlike E.L. Park, the actor who played Chan, for Emery English was not a second language, but it sure sounded that way. At 90 minutes, this movie is about 30 minutes too long. Had the producer just cut out Emery's part entirely, this movie would have been much better. The story would still have been a mess, with the characters played by Warner Baxter and Lois Moran traveling in the desert with camels, for no reason I can see, except to save money on sets. Lois Moran has the best scene in the picture, as she runs through San Francisco while passersby look at her. This apparent cinema verite look at 1929 San Francisco is interesting, but not long enough. Maybe if there were more running scenes with Lois Moran, they could have renamed the picture "Run, Lois, Run." It is beyond me how Gilbert Emery could continue to have a career in Hollywood, while John Gilbert was almost laughed off the screen for having a voice with the wrong pitch for the roles John Gilbert first played in talkies.

Among the necessary attributes of any motion picture, old or new, colour or black and white, widescreen or television, is that the presentation must be satisfying on some level. "Citizen Caine" satisfies our sense of balance; "Gone With the Wind" our sense of honour; "Star Wars" our sense of adventure; "LA Confidential" our sense of justice while numerous mysteries satisfy our need for a neat solution to the problem presented. The satisfaction need not be poetic nor even to our liking but we must be able to say, "At some level this movie was a satisfying experience." "Behind that Curtain" is not. While the historical interest of the exotic locales is fun, the acting is acceptable for the time, seeing Karloff, Baxter, and Park as Chan is fine, the satisfaction factor is zilch. IMDb is rightly leery of "spoilers" in reviews; no such warning is necessary for this creaking amateur script. As one looks for possible solutions to the "whodunit", one wastes one's time. Alas, a disappointment which proves yet again that without a good story no motion picture can succeed.

This film is of historical interest, as the first appearance on film of the Charlie Chan character, even though he doesn't appear until about 50 minutes into the movie, and is in only 3 scenes. But as a movie, it is almost intolerably bad. The actors were obviously very unsure of themselves, making the transition from silent to sound movies. I've seen Warner Baxter in silent films, and he was by no means as frozen as he was in this movie. Now and then he relaxes, and his dialog becomes a bit more natural, as it would be a few years later in a film like "42nd Street". But here, he seems flummoxed by the need to actually MEMORIZE lines - there are several moments where he speaks hesitantly, for all the world as if he just couldn't remember the line, and can no longer just say whatever he wants, as one could in a silent film.

Baxter is not the worst offender - the character of Mr. Galt (destined to play the melancholy role of "The Body") speaks so slowly and with such exaggerated pronunciation, is just terrible. Many of the actors appeared to be falling back on stage performance techniques, with loud emoting and over-enunciation, and as a result they over-powered the camera - or they would have, if their loud, artificial voices hadn't been combined with near-immobility. Everyone seems afraid to move - they plant themselves in one spot, then roar out their lines.

The camera-work is also very unimaginative for the most part, with one notable exception - the camel caravan traveling over the desert was quite beautifully photographed. It's probably not a coincidence that the scene was purely visual - when the filmmakers could fall back on the more familiar silent movie techniques, they seemed much freer and imaginative. The new technology, by contrast, introduced awkwardness and seemed burdensome.

The plot and the script were both very lame. The murderer is revealed very quickly, and mystery is replaced by a love triangle and a romance. Eve, the heroine, overacts horribly, with lots of head-bobbing and wriggling to convey her anguish. Her motivation is completely unbelievable - married to a murdering psychopath who has every reason in the world to kill her, she persists in fleeing from the police, and refusing to help convict him, even when her own life is at stake, and the police have hard evidence anyway, and there is no chance he can escape justice.

The script does deserve some credit for treating a theme like adultery in a rather surprisingly hard-edged way. There's no softening of the despicable betrayal, or of the heroine's painful discovery that her husband has been sleeping with their Indian maid - she even finds the latter's earring in her own bed! She has her own moment of temptation later on, but resists with the time-honored line, "After all, he IS my husband!" It's a good reminder that the '20s were by no means a strait-laced decade - the tasteful expunging of sex in the movies came later. But then the movie ruins it by having Eve shrinking from divorcing her cad of a husband (one of my favorite lines, by the way: "Are-you-going-to------DIVORCE------me???") because she is afraid of the scandal. Divorce wasn't THAT big a scandal in the '20s, especially among the rich. Eve is always veering between put-upon, shrinking damsel in distress and unpredictable, capable woman on her own. The movie would have been far better if she had been portrayed as a strong, modern woman throughout, but that Eve would never have been so stupid and sentimental as to leave a murderer roaming the streets.

This early talkie crime melodrama, just like so many other films at the time, still had to cope with many problems: the actors not yet having been adequately trained for talking pictures, the poor sound quality, and the scripts that also were written by people who'd written either silent movie scripts or stage plays before, but never any TALKIE script.

So this 'old' story of a lovely young girl marrying the wrong man who soon turns out not only to be a cheat and an egoist, but also a murderer, and her faithful friend, famous explorer Beetham, coming to her rescue at his own life's risk may look a little pale today - and especially for those who know that it's the oldest still existing movie in which the great Chinese detective Charlie Chan appears, and is even actually played by an Asian! Well, E.L. Park does quite nicely - in the few moments he appears toward the end of the movie... All the rest of the investigation is being done by British detective Sir Frederick Bruce (Gilbert Emory).

Well, if we - even as really fervent admirers of the 'Charlie Chan' movies - accept that fact (anyway, his name isn't mentioned in the title to lead us astray and make us think that this is an 'actual' Charlie Chan movie), we can see "Behind That Curtain" simply as a late 1920s' murder and love drama, not one of the best ones for sure, but still with quite a lot of suspense, an exotic atmosphere which takes us all the way from England via India to China (in fact, Boris Karloff can be seen in one of his early roles as Beetham's Indian servant), fascinating shots of the desert, and - even IF they're becoming a little melodramatic at times - a loving couple, Lois Moran and Warner Baxter (one of the big matinée idols in silents as well as in early talkies), for whose fate we really DO care!

An interesting document of early tries at sound cinema; and a quite entertaining and suspenseful one, too, for the friends of classic Hollywood.

After a couple of silent screen films, Charlie Chan was introduced to the talking picture with Behind That Curtain. Someone at Fox films had some faith in the character because after this film, it was that faith that created a series.

To put it bluntly this was a stodgy overacted mess by a lot of the players who were just getting used to sound film. Except for Warner Baxter who would win the second Best Actor Oscar for In Old Arizona, the rest chewed the scenery, possibly to breathe some life into this story.

Lois Moran has been swept off her feet by the dashing Philip Strange who is a real swine of a human being, a fact her father Claude King recognizes. He much prefers explorer Warner Baxter as a suitable husband for his daughter, but she's made her mind up and Baxter steps aside jolly good sport that he is.

Afterward it's discovered that Strange has murdered a detective who King had hired to get dirt on him. And it's certainly alluded that there was dirt to get. Moran runs off to the Persian desert on Baxter's expedition, but Strange won't let her go.

The end is in San Francisco where their top homicide cop Charlie Chan helps set the trap to nab Strange. E.L. Park plays Charlie who only has one real scene of consequence.

Behind That Curtain is melodramatic, overacted, and dull. Good thing that Fox Studios kept the franchise for Warner Oland. This really doesn't deserve to be included in Charlie Chan films, but I suppose it has to be.

Most of the other reviews pan this film to such an extent that you might pass over it. Please do not. In the 1920s Miss Lois Moran was one of the most beautiful ladies on earth and she shines here. No, not in the acting department, the director forced her to give in to melodrama. But the camera is in love with her and that transcends all the silliness of the plot. We are fortunate indeed to have this relic as a testament to her charm.