This is a British film with an entirely British cast. It is all made in a studio except for a few initial night scenes of Paris to set the mood. One of those opening shots is of the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre, as it was circa 1930. I was amazed to see that it said MOULIN ROUGE CINEMA on the front (with the usual windmill sails lit up above). Apparently the nightclub had been transformed into a cinema at that time, something which I had not known. The film makes little effort to appear to be French, and is entirely produced for home consumption in Britain, with no pretensions whatever at authenticity other than the use of French names. The film is directed by Leslie S. Hiscott, who also adapted it for the screen from a play by Miles Malleson (1888-1969, also an actor) and Walter Peacock. Malleson has an entry in Wikipedia, but in its list of Malleson's plays it neglects to mention the play on which this film is based, though it does mention his work on this screenplay. The next year he also wrote the screenplay for the charming film THE WATER GIPSIES (1932, see my review). And in 1934 he wrote the screenplay for that year's film of LORNA DOONE with Margaret Lockwood. As for Walter Peacock, he was a friend of R. C. Sheriff, was active in the London theatre in the 1920 and 1930s, and was connected with a production of a Pirandello play, but it is difficult to learn more of him. He did nothing else connected with the screen. The director, Hiscott, was extremely prolific. In this year he made five films, in 1932 he made nine, and in 1933 he made thirteen. He was the co-founder of the small but much loved Twickenham Studios just outside London. He retired in 1956. It seems that many of his films are lost, or otherwise they have not been rescued from the archives yet. As for the cast in this film, three of the actors were in only their second film: Hugh Williams, the male lead, Heather Angel, the female lead, and Binnie Barnes. Each had been in one film before, though none of them the same. Heather Angel, aged 21, comes across as very feeble here, but she would prove to be more substantial later in her career. She appeared in four Bulldog Drummond films as Phyllis Clavering, opposite John Howard (see my reviews of those for 1937, 1938, and two in 1939). She had previously had a bit part in BULLDOG DRUMMOND of 1929 (see my review). She went to Hollywood to make films and eventually died in California in 1986. Horace Hodges plays a very eccentric character role. (He appeared in films between 1930 and 1939, his last role being as the butler in Hitchcock's JAMAICA INN of that year.) The story of this film is very slight and unoriginal. Hugh Williams plays a dashing young man living in an atelier in Montmartre, who wants to be an artist. His father is a rich businessman who sends him too small an allowance to permit him to marry his beloved, Heather Angel. She is lusted after by a horrid supercilious man who is wealthy and hates Williams, and Williams himself is being persecuted by an equally horrid landlord, who also lusts after Angel. That's a lot of lust, but it is Paris, after all. The landlord is mysteriously murdered and Williams is blamed, but is of course innocent. Can he escape being arrested, tried, and executed for murder? The evidence is all against him. And who really murdered the landlord? It is all a mystery. For the answers, see the film.
Review of A Night in Montmartre
