The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

The Kennel Murder Case
Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Brothers, 1933.

Crime Stories and the Classic Detective Film

            In general, the production of crime films in America followed the historical rise of gangster violence connected with Prohibition. In the early thirties, there was a tendency to convey sociological dramas about the environmental factors in developing a criminal type, as in The Public Enemy (1931). This trend was later followed by psychopathic explanations in such pictures as White Heat (1949), also starring James Cagney. But both films suggest the poles in our culture’s reasoning about crime. Is it socially determined by economic inequities, lack of opportunity, and social injustice; or is there a criminal personality, naturally evil, antisocial, and perverse? Even though the classic detective genre—pioneered by Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie—views crime as a breach in a fundamentally sound social order and usually explores the grisly horrors of murder in an antiseptic, polite and superficial manner, it nonetheless raises the moral quandaries of good vs. evil, justice vs. vengeance, and individual vs. social factors in defining proscribed behaviors. In general, the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the dominant who-done-it mode of mysteries until the 1930s, took a conservative approach to crime in bringing the villains to justice and in re-establishing the comfortable upper-middle-class world whose values remain unquestioned.

It took the action-oriented, hard-boiled, randomly violent narratives of Dashiell Hammett and other authors for the Black Mask pulp magazine, to challenge the apparently self-satisfied supremacy of the gentleman detective, typified by Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, or tonight’s hero, Philo Vance. But this hero, undoubtedly the first type among film detectives, is important in characterizing the ratiocinative, detached, effete, aristocratic, and gifted dilettante approach to solving the intricate mental puzzle that mortal crime represents in the classic genre (Rubin).



Tonight’s Film

            The Kennel Murder Case is a stylish, briskly paced tale in the idle-rich-boy-amateur- sleuth vein. William Powell stars as a pre-Thin Man detective, with a pooch, for sure, but without the excessive imbibing or the rich wife. Philo Vance—the product of Golden Age novelist S. S. Van Dine—is of the upper class, where crime often seems to occur and whose members are often its victims. Standard Hollywood fair, the film offers no cinematic surprises, but the story is told with an economy of scenes, using rapid cutting and well-defined transitions. There are several who-done-it conventions that are utilized and reinforced by the production:

·        The introductory scenes establish multiple suspects and multiple murder motives. Incidentally, this exposition also indirectly comments on the upper-middle-class society’s values and its assumptions about human nature.

·        Included is a romantic sub-plot in which, typically, the detective is not involved.

·        The crime is a “locked-room” mystery, whose tradition derives from Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and Doyle’s “Adventure of the Speckled Band” (1892).

·        The flashback or re-enactment of the crime becomes part of the detective’s method.

·        The bumbling policeman supplies comic relief and sets off our genius hero to advantage.

·        Reviewing suspects, in the finger-print scene, contains the story and orients the viewer.

·        The detective is in control of his world—emphasized by manipulating the house models.

One curious feature of the mise-en-scene is the extent to which camera angles and frame compositions in the film emphasize the substantial furnishings of bourgeois homes. The effect is “to inflate the importance of the domestic setting, to give extra weight and importance to the upper-middle-class world” (Ruben 186), which has been violated by crime and whose validity must be re-established by a just resolution to the socially offensive violence.

Director Michael Curtiz (1888-1962)

            Born Mihaly Kertesz in Budapest, Hungary, Curtiz had a prolific fourteen-year career in Europe before moving in 1926 to Hollywood, where he joined Warner studios in perfecting some of the technological innovations of early American cinema—including sound and color. For instance, just three years after Warner pioneered the Vitaphone synchronized sound system in The Jazz Singer (1927), Curtiz directed six talkie feature films, including Mammy, a sequel to the first Al Jolson success. In the 1930s and 1940s, he came to epitomize the workhorse studio director, completing an average of five pictures a year and mastering a wide array of genres while leaving initial innovations to his colleagues. He is probably best known for the classic wartime romantic love drama, Casablanca (1942), which won the Oscar for best director, but his range is suggested by his role in the successes of Errol Flynn, who became a symbol of swashbuckling adventure in Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), but also a cowboy hero in the action westerns Dodge City (1939) and Virginia City (1940). Curtiz’s versatility is further demonstrated by his directing of James Cagney, who won the Oscar in the musical spectacle Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942); of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in the entertaining, comic holiday fluff of White Christmas (1954); and of Joanne Crawford, who won the Oscar in the atmospheric film-noir melodrama Mildred Pierce (1945). In fact, it seems odd to find the same intelligence behind this bitter study of the American family, commanded by an independent but obsessive mother, and the light, affectionate family romance in Life with Father (1947). This incredible contrast indicates the professionalism by which Curtiz mastered his material and chose the appropriate style for his story. All his films may be characterized by “crisp flowing narratives,” an efficiency of story-telling, and an unassuming, fluid command of Hollywood conventions (Gomery). In The Kennel Murder Case, he keeps the rather slight story moving briskly, developing the cleverness of his detective hero, and producing a typically light classic mystery story, unencumbered by romantic involvement or class consciousness.

Works Cited

Gomery, Douglas. “Michael Curtiz.” International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2:    Directors. 3rd ed. Ed. Laurie Collier Hillstrom. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. 210-13.

Rubin, Martin. “The Detective Thriller.” Thrillers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 181-202.

Other Features in "Detective & Crime Movies" Film Series, Fall 2001

Oct. 5               Laura (Preminger, 1944), with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price

Oct. 12             Murder My Sweet (Dmytryk, 1944), with Dick Powell, Ann Shirley, Mike Mazurka

Oct. 19             no film

Oct. 26             Brighton Rock (Boulting, 1947), with Richard Attenborough

Nov. 2               The List of Adrian Messenger (Huston, 1963), with George C. Scott

Nov. 9               Blow-up (Antonioni, 1966), with David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave

Nov. 16             The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995), with Kevin Spacey

Handout prepared by Greg Lyons
for the Fall 2001 "Detective & Crime Movie" Film Series,
organized by Greg Lyons, with the support of
COCC Humanities Dept. & Westside Video (Bend, OR)

Related links:

All-Movie Guide. All Media Guide, AEC One Stop Group, Inc., 1992-2002.
Search by Title, Person, or Keyword: http://allmovie.com/
...Michael Curtiz

The Kennel Murder Case (1933). Internet Movie Database - IMDb.com, 1990-2002.
URL: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0024210
...External Reviews of The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
URL: http://us.imdb.com/TUrls?COM+0024210
...Michael Curtiz (1886-1962)
URL: http://us.imdb.com/Name?Curtiz,+Michael

Available online handouts for films shown in Fall 2001 "Detective & Crime Movie" Series:
Brighton Rock (1947). Dir. John Boulting.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/brightonrock.htm
The Kennel Murder Case (1933). Dir. Michael Curtiz.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/kennelmurdercase.htm
Murder, My Sweet (1945). Dir. Edward Dmytryck.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/murdermysweet.htm
The Usual Suspects (1995). Dir. Bryan Singer.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/usualsuspects.htm

See also Popular Culture Video List (2000).
Detective | Science fiction | Travel | Film noir | Spy thriller | Western
Greg Lyons, comp. COCC Library & Humanities Dept. video holdings, 2000.
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/courses/film/popculture.html

Return to Film Studies - Index of Online Resources
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/humanities/HIR/Film/index.htm

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Last updated: 26 May 2003
Cora Agatucci ~ E-Mail: cagatucci@cocc.edu
Copyright © 2002-2003, Greg Lyons
Humanities Department, Central Oregon Community College