What Do You Think? (Number Three)

What Do You Think? (Number Three) (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Third film in the series has Carey Wilson doing the narrating in the story on whether or not the dead really communicated with the living. A concert violinist is married to his one love but a year after the wedding he dies from a strange disease. Before his death he mentions to his wife that a violin's high note could break a glass but not if it has any liquid in it. Soon after his death the wife decides to kill herself but then something happens. I won't ruin the surprise but the entire film is pretty much built up for this twist and I personally didn't think it worked as strongly as I'm sure the filmmakers wanted. This is the first film in this series that I've seen so I can't say how strong or weak it is compared to others but it's a decent time killer and I'm sure fans of the famous director will want to check it out. There's a lot of stock footage in the film so you won't get to see too much of the directors style but there is one nice sequence where the wife is walking alone after the death where you'll be able to see some of the director's famous touch. The story itself is decent at best but that's pretty much the same thing that could be said about the entire film.

A woman marries a concert violinist. He dies. She thinks about suicide until....

Once again, Carey Wilson offers us a short subject in which we are led down the path of a communication with the dead. Then, having made his case in the strongest possible terms -- as a story told by a third party who knows someone who etc. Etc. -- we're asked what we think.

This was a technique my mother used on me when I was a small child, asking me if I wanted to do something like getting an inoculation. "You want to have Dr. Kaplan stick a big needle into your arm and inject the vaccine in its dense medium into your arm, don't you?" was not the way she phrased it, of course. It was a technique to make me think that I was making decisions on my own, which was good, but phrased in such a way as to only have one answer. I'm glad she did both, but it has made me wary of such offers.