The Silent Passenger (1935)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 3 minutes, rated 6.2 by 77 cinematizens.
Gerne: Mystery.
Verdict: Lord Peter appears.
We know from the get-go in this inverted krimi who dun it, where, how, and why. How long will it take Plod to get there is the question?
The story open in a boat-train hotel in Old Blighty as Blackmailer is coercing Married Woman to abscond to France with him by referring to the amorous emails she wrote to him. He is short, overweight, warty, and rude. No wonder she forsook the tall, dapper, polite, forthright John Loder for this tripe. Credibility starts low.
The pace accelerates when a second victim confronts Blackmailer and after some useless dialogue throttles him. Victim proceeds to stuff corpse into a steamer trunk left behind by the Marx Brothers and he then carries the trunk downstairs as if he were a porter, bent under the weight and obscured by the bulk past the reception desk, where Lord Peter Wimsey is making fatuous remarks. His Lordship does notice that the porter’s trousers have a well-ironed crease in them and that is most unusual for a navvy.
The trunk is labeled for Married Woman and shortly her Absent Husband catches up with her and they have a reconciliation of sorts. He goes upstairs to settle the hash of Blackmailer in the room where he mistakes murderous Victim for Blackmailer and fisticuffs ensure. Blackmailer gets away.
Husband and Woman take the train to Southampton and then the ferry to Le Havre where French officials cannot levy an import duty on the corpse in the trunk and send it back to England along with Husband and Wife. Lord Peter who has observed all this joins them in returning with his man Bunter.
While the circumstantial evidence against Absent Husband is great, after seeing his Eton tie Inspector Parker (Wimsey’s brother-in-law) does not believe him guilty.
Spoiler ahead.
Parker and Wimsey decide to investigate further and enlist the aid of the railroad which assigns to the case…. wait for it… the murderous Victim who is a company employee. He can hardly believe his luck. Only Absent Husband saw him and now Victim is in a position to shift the blame on him.
He has his wife, who evidently is complicit in both the blackmail and murder, chat up Married Woman and plant seeds of doubt about Husband’s guilt. Just causal like. Being a screenwriters twit Married Woman swallows the bait, but both Husband and Wimsey see a set-up in that causal conversation and re-double their efforts. Husband chases around and Wimsey makes fatuous remarks non-stop. Whew!
There is a superb scene in a nocturnal rail yard where Victim and Husband duke it out, and accidentally release the brake on a gigantic steam engine which then rolls ever so slowly, silently, and implacably onward. This attack on Husband convinces everyone the Victim is the Villain and in time he is netted after another barrage Wimsey’s verbiage.
There are some nice procedural touches as when Wimsey realises that the railroad detective (psst, Victim-Villain) knew the room number was 9, even after the numeral was removed. Likewise the denouement in the railway baggage car with the geese is a keeper.
Does the title refer to the body in the trunk which is removed in the first fifteen minutes, or what? It seems an early talkie because often the characters face the camera square in closeup to deliver the lines.
This was the first film adaptation of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey. Many more followed. I particularly liked the Ian Carmichael personifications 1972-1974 in part because of the bond between his Wimsey and Bunter. While Bunter appears in this film he is not developed, nor Wimsey’s attachment to him explained.