a gem of a movie: Jewel Robbery (1932)

  Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 4. Burbank, CA, distributed by Warner Home Video [2012]. 4 videodiscs (267 min.): sound, black and white. Contents: Jewel Robbery; Lawyer Man; They Call It Sin; Man Wanted.

   Jewel Robbery was originally released as a motion picture in 1932 by Warner Bros. Pictures & the Vitaphone Corp. Directed by William Dieterle; screenplay by Erwin Gelsey, based on a story by Ladislaus Fodor. Performers: Kay Francis, William Powell, Alan Mowbray, Hardie Albright, André Luguet, Sheila Terry. Summary: Baroness Teri von Horhenfels lives in Vienna, Austria, with a husband who bores her. When a jewel thief victimizes her, she is intrigued by him.

prosperity is just around the corner

   There are no weak links in Warner's DVD set Forbidden Hollywood v4, but the real jewel is … Jewel Robbery, an absolute creampuff of a movie that sparkles with a sprightly plot and knowing repartee delivered at a snappy pace. The cast is boffo: Kay Francis shines in a quintessentially Kay Francis role: a high society woman who is alternately bored and oversexed. Thus she's ripe for a romance with dashing thief William Powell (oops! he prefers to be called Robber).
 
  Ironically it was this kind of effortless performance that garnered Miss Francis the reputation as a so-so actress because everything seemed so easy for her. But ultimately this is William Powell's movie as he breezes through his role as the titular character. As always he and Francis have marvelous onscreen chemistry. Kudos also to the rest of the spot on cast: Henry Kolker as Teri’s plodding husband, who nonetheless gets some of the best lines; the ever exuberant Helen Vinson (in her first film), who’s so good she almost steals the movie from the divine Miss Francis; and Lee Kohlmar as the nervously obsequious jeweler Mr. Holländer and Clarence Wilson as the clueless police shief, both of whom fall victim to those 'drugged cigarettes.'

 
   With its echt-Continental pedigree, Jewel Robbery could almost be seen as a warm-up for the even better (though not by much) Trouble in Paradise that appeared later that year [1], with Kay Francis more or less reprising the baroness role (this time as a perfume heiress) and the urbane Herbert Marshall stepping in as the suave thief. Indeed Jewel Robbery has a very Lubitsch-like Euro feel to it as director William Dieterle sustains a mostly breakneck pacing that that even the great Lubitsch would envy. The brittle dialogue is delivered so fast that most of the innuendos fly under the radar and it takes several viewings to appreciate the sly implications and mildly subversive editorial comments.

    But getting back to those funny cigarettes: among other things what makes Robbery a pre-Code cult classic is that it's quite possibly the earliest overt reference to marijuana in the movies, those thin cigarettes William Powell keeps passing out. And to make matters all the cheekier it’s done so in a comic context.

“untouched in the suburbs . . . that doesn’t intrigue me at all”

   The film’s mildly leftist subtext delivers its message subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – in sometimes contradictory ways, in any case always reflecting a certain pre-Code skepticism and street smarts. The Robber’s disdain for bankers inspires the rejoinder that he must be a communist. Quite the contrary, he explains. He much prefers predatory capitalism to egalitarian communism: even in the Depression-laden 1930s, in which the masses in the capitalist countries are mostly poor and downtrodden, there’s still plenty of well-to-do targets for a self-respecting criminal to prey upon.

   As Powell explains, what could he steal in a communist world? Grain elevators? Tractors? And much like the two confidence artists in Trouble in Paradise, Powell’s gentleman thief only fleeces the eminently deserving: wealthy scions, idle heiresses, bankers, government bureaucrats, in other words, the corrupt rich.

   The Francis and Powell characters are appealing, the most sympathetic in the entire film actually. Consequently we root for their, however improbable, romantic success. Indeed, they’re about the only characters in the story worth rooting for. Paradoxically, despite their good looks, fine clothes and breezy charm neither is very admirable. Teri, by her own admission, is superficial, self-centered, materialistic and uninteresting, and the robber, for all his surface gloss, is still a methodical, calculating criminal. Yet like them we do. We must, it would seem. After all they look pretty good next to the rich trash, doofus policemen, and pompous government apparatchiks they’re surrounded by. The possible exception is the flighty, harmless Marianne (Helen Vinson), more or less a clone of Teri in her trophy wife status and thrill-seeking  vacuity.

   Note: this was Francis’s and Powell’s penultimate movie (they did six altogether). The arguably superior – and very different in tone – One Way Passage that followed later that year was their final pairing. And what a year 1932 was for Kay Francis!

    [1] As good as it is, Jewel Robbery still has a hint of the ramshackle and rough-around-the-edges that accounts for a good deal of its charm and the appeal of pre-Code movies today. By contrast Trouble in Paradise luxuriates in a generous swath of Lubitschian polish typical of Paramount’s best efforts.