Yes, that's WORLD, not LIFE, despite the fact that it's nearly Xmas, the time when you are practically obligated to watch the
other Jimmy Stewart "wonderful" movie. This one's billed as sort of a cross between a gumshoe film and a screwball comedy (like the
Thin Man movies), but misses slightly. A lot of the problem is how Stewart plays it: he's unusually hard and positively an unlikable cad. A good contrast is with the sublime Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert pairing in
It Happened One Night, where Gable is also a macho type with little time for dames, but still manages to elicit affection because he's obviously a big softy inside, who's falling hard for Colbert's character. In contrast, Stewart shows no sign of even liking her until suddenly he's all over her in a decidedly leery fashion.
This is a shame, because the bones of the film are good, and the combination
could work. Stewart is a detective whose main job at the start of the film is chasing after a tobacco fortune heir to keep him from making drunken mistakes. One mistake that is haunting him, especially now he is engaged, is a former dancer who claims he broke a promise to her after a dalliance. While Stewart is resting in the office he shares with his older pal "Cap", the heir gets sozzled and goes out to settle a score with this dancer. Stewart gets wind and is chasing after him, but too late: Stewart bursts in to the dancer's apartment to find the lights off, the dancer dead and the heir holding the smoking gun. It is the work of a moment to work out that the heir didn't kill her (he doesn't even know she's there) and he carries him bodily out the back while the police run up the stairs. Before he goes, though, he finds a charm consisting of half a dime clutched in the dead woman's hand. He is certain that this means that the person framing the heir is his fiancée, but can't prove it before the police close in and follow him to the boat he's got the heir hidden in. Stewart gets sentenced to a year while the heir gets sentenced to death. Stewart is being taken in handcuffs to prison when he spots an ad in the paper apparently placed by a woman wanting to re-unite with her estranged husband, and it's signed "Half-a-dime". We the viewers know that this has been put there by the fiancée and her murderous lover after he realized he'd left the charm behind at the scene, and also realized that the husband she thought she'd got rid of in Australia was actually visiting the US as part of an acting troupe and might blow her cover. And all of this is just the set up! Stewart jumps off the train handcuffed to one of the cops (who will be a recurring comic presence in the movie - he also appears in the Marx Brothers'
Horse Feathers) and is seen by Claudette Colbert apparently (but not actually) drowning the cop before unlocking the cuffs. A dog gives her away and he realizes that he'll have to take her away from the scene and dump her somewhere or his cover will be blown before he has a chance to make it to Saugities, where the "Half-a-Dime" meetup is supposed to happen. Colbert is playing a famous poetess, and, well, watch it yourself. There aren't many laughs (even where there really should be, as when they encounter a boy scout troupe,
once he has won her over to his cause) but there are plenty of spaces where a laugh
would be if the film was just slightly better done. Again, the tone swings wildly: there is an actual murder of a young innocent that is sort of glossed over with a quick return to light-hearted shenanigans. A missed opportunity, methinks.
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