The Night of the Party ** (1935, Leslie Banks, Ian Hunter, Jane Baxter, Ernest Thesiger, Malcolm Keen, Viola Keats) – Classic Movie Review 10,461

Director Michael Powell’s 1935 British black and white crime mystery thriller The Night of the Party is an intriguing, lightly amusing and involving if creaky and contrived early Powell film with a good cast and a workable stock plot from a play of the day (by Roland Pertwee and John Hastings Turner) about a party game called Murder in the Dark going murderously wrong.

A nasty tabloid newspaper baron, Lord Studholme (Malcolm Keen), is killed during a parlour game with the lights out at his own cocktail party in honour of Princess Maria Amelia of Corsova (Muriel Aked), and his secretary, Guy Kennington (Ian Hunter), is framed as the number one suspect, though every guest has a motive (‘No use pretendin’ that anyone’s broken-hearted. The man was a rotter’).

He was a rotter! The lecherous newspaper baron has been trying to blackmail an indiscreet young woman called Joan Holland (Viola Keats) into submitting to his unwelcome attentions. However, fortunately, Joan Holland’s father, master sleuth Sir John Holland of Scotland Yard (Leslie Banks), is on the scene and on the case.

It all leads up to a climax in the murder trial at the Old Bailey, presided over by The Judge (Louis Goodrich). The party sequence and the final court scene are the highlights, both well staged by Powell, and well performed too, with Banks, Thesiger and Keats the hit turns.

The cast in this 1930s British quota quickie are: Leslie Banks,  Jane Baxter, Ernest Thesiger, Viola Keats, Ian Hunter, Malcolm Keen, Jane Millican, Muriel Aked, Lawrence Anderson, W Graham Brown, John Turnbull as Inspector Ramage, Gerald Barry, Louis Goodrich, Cecil Ramage, Disney Roebuck as the creepy butler and Gordon Begg.

The film was long believed lost, but a copy was found and was shown at the National Film Theatre in London in March 2000. And now it is freely available on the internet.

It was made for £12,500 at the Lime Grove Studios, Shepherd’s Bush, London.

The art direction is by Alfred Junge, a regular contributor to the films of Powell and Pressburger.

The Night of the Party is directed by Michael Powell, runs 61 minutes, is made by Gaumont British Picture Corporation and Gaumont British Distributors (1935) (UK), is written by Roland Pertwee (dialogue), John Hastings Turner (dialogue) and Ralph Smart (scenario), based on a play by Roland Pertwee and John Hastings Turner, is shot in black and white by Glen MacWilliams, is produced by Jerome Jackson and designed by Alfred Junge.

It was released in the US as The Murder Party.

Powell writes in his autobiography Michael Powell: A Life in Movies: ‘The script was a stinker. It was one of those talkie scripts. At least a hundred pages. You cannot imagine the awfulness of it, in out-of-touch Old England in 1933. The Night of the Party sank without trace.’

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,461

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