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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Cracking Crime on Foreign Soil


What It Was, Was UK Football: The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939)

They refer to this English sport as "football," but it looks like soccer they're playing, a backdrop against which investigating eccentric Leslie Banks solves a playing field murder. Some of wit from Hitchcock thrillers bled into light whodunits other UK firms were staging; this one might have led to a series for Banks given easier circumstance, but how could a Brit gumshoe function amidst war and nightly bomb raids? Arsenal in hindsight seems a last stand for genteel detecting among civilized suspects unconcerned over larger issues; interesting to think that most players on its field would be in uniform within months of shooting. The murder is wildly complicated; amidst thick accents and scientific detail, I frankly got lost, though humor came happily to the rescue. The Arsenal Stadium Mystery had to have been an elusive one until VCI unearthed it as part of an ongoing "Rank Collection" of DVD's, quality being fine and well worth purchase.

3 Comments:

Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer expalins it all re Brit football, and related sports:


What it was, was football. That routine of a hillbilly seeing a football game for first time became a freak hit in 1954 for Andy Griffith. Unfortunately, Andy was persuaded to bring it out again in 1975 for the premier of "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell," where he died a horrible death before a live nationwide audience. Evidently, the country had moved on.

But indeed, that game played by kicking a round ball is generally known as "football" throughout most of the world. Why do we persist in calling it "soccer" then? Well, once upon a time, in England, it was known as "Association Football," to distinguish it from "Rugby Football," the rough, tough game I used to play, with no pads or any protection at all, save for one necessary piece of apparatus. Since a rugby player was known as a "rugger," some wag effected a contraction of the middle letters of "Association" into "soccer." Rugby was the man's game, however. There are fields in southern New Jersey which still carry souvenirs of my participation.

I understand that the game scenes for "Arsenal Stadium Mystery" were actually filmed during the 1938 season, with the Brentford first division club filling in for the fictitious "Trojans." There would have been no bombs falling then, but a different situation entirely prevailed for movie goers in November, 1939, when the film was actually released. It's a pity that it didn't lead to a series for Leslie Banks, who would have brought a special talent to such an eccentric character as Inspector Slade. But the world itself had moved on by that point. There was at least one attempt for a follow-up, however, and it would have been a fascinating opportunity. The director, Thorald Dickinson proposed a "Denham Studio Mystery," which would have incorporated scenes from that studio's failed epic, "I, Claudius." Would it have been like "Charlie Chan at the Opera," with Charles Laughton brought back to reprise his Claudius character, performing very much the function of Karloff's Gravelle? And would it have been too much to hope for a cameo by Merle Oberon, the Messalina of "the epic that never was"? Perhaps she could have been persuaded, if the story concerned the murder of Laughton, with herself unmasked at the end as the killer.

Daniel

10:54 AM  
Blogger James Abbott said...

Banks is terrific in this film -- he is an under-valued player. Oddly enough, Banks played Sherlock Holmes to Nigel Bruce's Watson for Bruce's Hound of the Baskervilles screen test. One wonders what Banks might've made of Holmes.

1:11 PM  
Blogger aldi said...

Dan comments that there were no bombs falling in 1938 but that it was a different situation in November 1939 when the movie was released. Actually the situation remained the same, the Germans didn't begin bombing the UK until September 1940. He's right about football though, that is indeed the usual term with us Brits.

8:20 AM  

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