Directed by Maurice Elvey
1935/UK
Gaumont British Picture Corporation
First viewing
Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead. – Ambrose Bierce
I am moving into 1935 for the moment in order to catch a couple of films that are disappearing from Netflix Instant on May 1. This is the story of Maximus, a fake music hall mind-reader (Claude Rains) who with the assistance of his wife (Fay Wray) performs such stunts as “guessing” items she collects from the audience. One night when Christine (Jane Baxter) is present in the crowd, Maximus experiences a true clairvoyant trance. Later, he begins to prophecy the future when Christine is around. This eventually gets him into trouble as is blamed for the catastrophes he predicts.
This movie started out extremely strong. Claude Rains is, of course, brilliant and Faye Wray is appealing. The screenplay was written by long-time Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett and made at Hitchcock’s British studio and early parts of the piece had a definite Hitchcockian feel. Unfortunately, the story descends into melodrama and the ending is really weak. Still, I’m glad I watched this while I could. I love Rains and he was in top form here.
I also liked this movie……of course it was Claude Rains, so you can’t go wrong. There was something odd about this film that I noticed. It must have been done on a very low budget, even though it was made by Gaumont. The interiors look like something from an Ed Wood film……very cheesy. Overall, however, I thought it was pretty decent, although why he was brought to trial for the Humber Tunnel disaster (or whatever it was called) seemed a bit far-fetched. But I overlook anything for Rains!!!
Rains was perfect and Fay Wray did not scream once. I also didn’t understand the reasoning behind the trial or why he had to prove he was really a clairvoyant. I didn’t really notice the cheesy sets. I must have been concentrating on something else.