User Reviews

"The Great Gambini" is a static production: all the action takes place inside three locations - a nightclub and two houses. But there are also some inventive moments that probably had very rarely been seen in the movies before 1937: I'm talking in particular about the conflicting flashbacks, where we see more than one version of the same story, and the one-minute countdown to give the audience the chance to name the killer (though the on-screen text claiming "You have now been given all the vital clues to solve the mystery" is a bit of an exaggeration - for example, we had heard about the mysterious blackmailer with the initials "M.M" for the first time only a few seconds earlier!) With the exception of the bland John Trent, the cast is very fine, particularly Genevieve Tobin doing her best Gracie Allen impression (Gracie herself is even name-dropped in the dialogue), the deadpan Reginald Denny, and the frustrated police inspector William Demarest (a role that was given to him many times, for a reason - he was very good at it!) **1/2 out of 4.

Director Charles Vidor was in his element with The Great Gambini ('37). At one point in this film the screen is occupied by a clock which records the passing of the minute allotted to the audience for the examination of the clues and the discovery of the murderer. Any guess might have been right, for the clues were rampant and all pointed in different directions.

Indeed, this film could be described as not so much a mystery as an ill-constructed crossword puzzle. The Great Gambini (Akim Tamiroff) can read minds, and it is he who takes a booking in a fashionable nightclub where he foretells that Stephen Danby (Roland Drew) and Ann Randall (Marian Marsh) who are to be married on the next day, will not do so.

Indeed, marriage is not on the agenda at all - for the very good reason that Stephen Danby is murdered. Would you believe that all the people who were dining with him on the previous night, his fiancée and her father, step-mother and ex-lover, happened to visit him afterwards in his flat in the early hours of the morning. All are slightly unbalanced, - or so it seems from the audience's point of view.

On the morning after the murder, the mind-reader himself arrives and in a few minutes he puzzles detectives, William Demarest and Edward Brophy. Admittedly that would not take much of an effort! The script is second rate, to say the least. Occasionally there is a situation which promises to become exciting, but it is never more than a promise.

Although the script lets us down, Charles Vidor's direction, however, is often very exciting: the opening credits fall into place through a magician's sleight-of-hand; a flashback sequence is filmed in one long take, with a character walking into the camera, stopping in close-up, and then retreating; in the final flashback, the screen is completely blacked out and is opened from the center to reveal the eyes of the murderer, whose face then materialises in a mirror as his victim is adjusting his stage make-up.

In bringing off these clever innovations, Vidor admitted that he owed much to the skill of his photographer, Leon Shamroy.

With some of the best opening credits ever seen on film, this spooky looking but amusing and funny mystery is a quick glimpse into the world of a mind reader/fortune teller (Akim Tamiroff as the titled character) and is highly recommended. It starts off with a darkly lit mind-reading act by Tamiroff where bride to be Marian Marsh finds out that her wedding to be will not be to which true love John Trent begins to applaud, putting him on the top of the suspect list when Marsh's fiancée Ronald Drew is found dead in his apartment. While all of the suspects are questioned, Tamiroff arrives as the man who predicted the wedding would not go off, and everything the detectives try to do is turned upside down.

William Demarest is very funny as the grumpy head detective on the case, telling underling Edward Brophy, "I hope one day on a case we don't find your finger prints on everything". Tamiroff pretty much takes over the case, proving the detective to be total fools, as well as some of the others present. "You don't look as foolish as you are", Reginald Denny (as Marsh's father) tells his Billie Burke like second wife Genevieve Tobin who expresses herself with one stupid statement after another. In fact, Demarest indicates his frustration with the case by saying, "This is beginning to look like a job for a mind reader", forgetting that he's in the presence of one.

While a series of "Great Gambini" films seems like it would have been successful, unfortunately, only one was made, and it is quite good, with an unforgettable performance by the unique Tamiroff. Superb photography makes this appear to be almost a horror movie, and I was very surprised to find out that Tamiroff never starred in one. He has a very unforgettable profile and certainly could have been a rival to both Karloff and Lugosi. Others in the cast get great dialog, and the rapport between Demarest and Brophy (towards each other and the other suspects) is very funny. "If you're going to insult me, you've got to do it in English!", Brophy tells Tamiroff's assistant as she screams at him in Russian. Another great little find in the historical vaults of Hollywood cinema!

I had been wanting to see this film for awhile, because there is a similarly named character in a 1981 episode of Little House on the Prairie. In the Little House episode, Jack Kruschen plays Randolpho Gambini, a flamboyant magician who comes to the sleepy town of Walnut Grove and puts on a show. A tragedy occurs during his spectacular performance. Kruschen's role seems to have been inspired by the title character in this Paramount B programmer. Only here it's Akim Tamiroff in the main role.

Tamiroff was a memorable actor who seldom played leads in Hollywood. He was often brought on as comic relief in films like HONEYMOON IN BALI (1939) in which he's cast as an unnamed window washer; or in THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940) alongside Brian Donlevy as a crooked politician's right hand man. It's fun to see Tamiroff have the spotlight, literally, in this production.

Several of the other cast members reminded me of more famous types. Marian Marsh is a high society deb who's engaged to the wrong man (Roland Drew) but should be marrying another guy (John Trent). Marsh's hair, make-up and attitude make her resemble Bonita Granville; and Trent comes across like John Shelton who was making romcoms over at MGM during this period. In the role of Marsh's mother, we have Genevieve Tobin after her Warner Brothers contract days, essaying the part of a dizzy matriarch, taking a page out of Billie Burke's handbook.

Marsh was probably cast because earlier in the decade, she had played Trilby in a precode version of SVENGALI. I imagine when the producers were casting for this picture, they remembered the hypnotic spell John Barrymore's character had put on her, and since Gambini (Tamiroff) is ultimately revealed as a villain, there is some correlation to that earlier drama. Of course, this is a lighter studio concoction, and we know that after Gambini is revealed to be the culprit, there will be a pleasant ending with Marsh reuniting with Trent...though initially, he's so persistent in his pursuit of her, he almost seems like a stalker.

One aspect of this modestly budgeted effort is the use of mystery to directly engage the audience. Drew's character is murdered, and an investigation ensues, carried out by two bumbling police detectives (William Demarest and Edward Brophy). During his mentalist act at a local nightclub the night before, Gambini had communicated through an assistant that Drew would not marry Marsh, implying he wouldn't be able to (due to his impending death). But how would Gambini know such a thing, unless he was planning to do the killing. Of course, Trent has a motive as do other characters, which complicates the investigation.

At one point near the end, there's a dramatic revelation involving the Gambini character. The film stops after Tobin's character faints, and audience members (in the movie theater) are asked to take a moment to consider all the clues. The movie pauses for a full minute with flashbacks from key scenes, before the action resumes.

Overall, this isn't a terrible way to spend 70 minutes (69 minutes if you subtract the minute that the movie stops before the ending plays out). It's always nice to see Tamiroff have a bit more to do on screen. I do wonder if Michael Landon, who directed the Little House episode 'Gambini the Great' had previously seen this film. It seems likely.