Robert Florey began his career with a number of celebrated silent avant garde shorts films – including 'The Love of Zero (1927)' and 'The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (1928)' – all strongly indebted to 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)' and German Expressionism. Therefore, it's a little disappointing that his features aren't all that interesting. 'Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)' was visually stunning, thanks largely to cinematographer Karl Freund, but was stunted by ham- fisted acting and bad dialogue (perhaps a side-effect of the director's poor command of English). 'The Hole in the Wall (1929),' bound by the restrictions of early sound technology, even lacks Florey's usual visual flair – the only exception is the entrance to Madam Mystera's haunt, which has the warped ceiling of a 'Caligari' set. Perhaps the primary interest here is the film's cast, which includes two future stars in their first talkie.
The story itself is vaguely interesting: a shrewd shyster called The Fox (Edward G. Robinson) recruits a wrongly-accused ex-con (Claudette Colbert, in her second role) to help perpetrate a Spiritualism scam. (Spiritualism was all the rage in the 1920s, its greatest proponent being author Arthur Conan Doyle, who used his Professor Challenger character to promote the field in his 1926 novel "The Land of Mist"). Unfortunately, there's very little tension in this film. The possible drowning of a little girl should have made for suspenseful storytelling, and Florey was generally an expert at editing rhythmic montages, but here there's no urgency in his cross-cutting, and the dialogue unfolds with unnatural slowness, as though to make certain that the sound equipment is catching everything. Finally, I was very much surprised that, after an hour of exposing Spiritualism as a fraud, the film suddenly tosses in an authentic psychic moment, and nobody thinks twice about it.
The story itself is vaguely interesting: a shrewd shyster called The Fox (Edward G. Robinson) recruits a wrongly-accused ex-con (Claudette Colbert, in her second role) to help perpetrate a Spiritualism scam. (Spiritualism was all the rage in the 1920s, its greatest proponent being author Arthur Conan Doyle, who used his Professor Challenger character to promote the field in his 1926 novel "The Land of Mist"). Unfortunately, there's very little tension in this film. The possible drowning of a little girl should have made for suspenseful storytelling, and Florey was generally an expert at editing rhythmic montages, but here there's no urgency in his cross-cutting, and the dialogue unfolds with unnatural slowness, as though to make certain that the sound equipment is catching everything. Finally, I was very much surprised that, after an hour of exposing Spiritualism as a fraud, the film suddenly tosses in an authentic psychic moment, and nobody thinks twice about it.