JohnHowardReid Here's a genuine find! This film was actually based on a stage play (not a story as most references have it). Admittedly, this stage origin is not readily noticeable, even though very little attempt has been made to open it out. The reason the movie succeeds so well, lies in the super-fast and most ingratiating manner in which the players, particularly William Powell, deliver their clever, witty lines. Miss Francis does reasonably well too, although she is no match for Powell and is even overshadowed by Henry Kolker (I loved his amusing bit with the ring in his mouth) and Spencer Charters (who – in one of the biggest roles of his career – so delightfully plays a dumb night-watchman). Dialogue director William Keighley's insistence on fast dialogue delivery is matched by the equally fast camera movement demanded by director William Dieterle. Crisp film editing and some wonderfully Germanic lighting and atmospheric sets all contribute. In fact the movie often has a real European look about it. Best of all, it runs less than 80 minutes, and there is not a single slack moment from go to whoa.

jbacks3 Warner Brothers was bleeding some serious red ink in 1932. The public's once-insatiable talkie curiosity had worn off and the Depression had tightened it's stranglehold on America, causing ticket prices to drop below 1930-31 levels. Against this reality, the studio had actively pursued marginal Broadway plays it rightly thought could be had on the cheap and improved on; Ladislas Fordor's comedy "Ekszerrablás a Váci-uccában" (or "Jewel Robbery"), adapted for the stage by Bertram Bloch. The play had blown through the Booth Theatre after just 54 performances in front of half-filled seats. Purchased for a reported $10,000, the property came in at cost low enough to justify giving it an A-effort. Newly hired screenwriter Erwin S. Gelsey rewrote the play and recent German émigré William Dieterle was enlisted to direct. At this point Warner's was spending about $300,000 on it's A-efforts and was sandbagging it's huge losses (they would continue into 1936) from profits squirreled away from the salad days of 1928-31. Jewel Robbery did nothing to help it's 1932 bottom line. The film flopped miserably (critics cited Kay Francis' interpretation of a morally objectionable philandering Viennese trophy wife). The fact was, there wasn't much Depression era audiences could relate to. Warner's injection of sex and marijuana would doom any hope of eking out re-release profits after the 1934 Production Code kicked in and the property would remain virtually unseen until the inception of TCM. To contemporary audiences, Jewel Robbery is a pre-code hoot. To Jack L. Warner, it was an ulcer.

dougdoepke Of course, good sophisticated comedy is ageless. This one's not top-notch, but is generally entertaining with an expert cast and witty dialog full of expected entendres. What it doesn't do is sparkle, probably because the director lacks the flair of a Cukor or Lubitsch as others point out. Also, the stage play origins are evident in some of the over-long scenes, such as the robbery sequence and Powell's apartment. Director Dieterle tries to compensate by keeping the cast in motion, but overstays the comedic potential. Note too, that the dialog makes no reference to the funny cigarettes. Instead, we're left to infer the brand from the silliness of their effects, which are about as exaggerated as the notorious Reefer Madness (1936).The subtext is in keeping with the Depression era, even though done with a lighter touch. Wealth is shown as unfulfilling (the Baron is on an expensive treadmill trying to keep the bored Francis happy), while authority comes across as inept (even the high-echelon Paul flounders). Revealingly, Francis has to go outside her circles to find "real romance", something her pampered pal Marianne also yearns for. At the same time, both fantasize about being "robbed" by the likes of Powell aboard a slow-moving train. Note too that, behind all the clever verbiage, Francis's frivolous Baronness is not a very likable person. The screenplay has her sense this by wishing she could break out of her gilded confinement and become a better person. Thus, Powell acts as something of a Galahad to her wishes, even though he's technically and tellingly on the wrong side of the law.Anyway, there's enough sophisticated charm and clever dialog to qualify this as a pre-Code comedy worth catching up with.

bkoganbing In Jewel Robbery the kind of character that William Powell plays is a gentleman thief, but he's not a guy like Ronald Colman in Raffles or Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief. He just barges in, holds people at gunpoint and robs them or in this case the establishment they're in.Which makes you kind of wonder why this guy hasn't been caught yet. The answer lies in the story and for the audience in the debonair charm of William Powell.At the time Powell was teamed with Kay Francis in this film. This was the fifth of six films they did together. Both came over from Paramount to Warner Brothers. Before Powell did Manhattan Melodrama at MGM with Myrna Loy and started that screen partnership, he was known for teaming with Kay Francis. The setting for Jewel Robbery, based on a play by Ladislas Fodor is old Vienna of the new Austria which became a more compact country after being shorn of both the Hapsburg monarchy and its Balkan dependents. Francis is in a jewelry store doing a little shopping with as it turns out both her titled husband Henry Kolker and her cabinet member lover Hardie Albright.When Powell and his gang come in to rob the place, Powell's such a charming dude, Francis decides he's far more interesting than either of the two guys she's involved with. He's kind of intrigued with her as well.In the Citadel series Films Of William Powell the criticism of Jewel Robbery is that this film could have been a classic with a director like Ernst Lubitsch. I also think Mitchell Leisen or George Cukor, or Gregory LaCava would have worked wonders with this film. Given some of the double entendre dialog and the ending of this film, it certainly would not have passed muster with The Code which was coming in two more years.As it is, it's a pleasant enough film, but could have been a whole lot better.