What, pray tell, is a fire raiser? It's an arsonist, but...fire raiser is such a mealy-mouthed term. It feels too polite. Maybe it had greater purchase culturally in Britain in the 1930s, but 90 years later, it's an odd choice. Hard to fault Michael Powell for not having that foresight, but, seriously, arsonist is such a better term. It just sounds meaner. Anyway, this is the closest I'd say that Powell has come to failure in the opening four surviving films of his quota quickie period. A thriller without much in the way of thrills, helped none at all by being overstuffed and too broadly told, and reminding me of how John Huston had such trouble with straight thrillers throughout his tired period.
Sifting through everything post hoc, the film is about Jim Bronson (Leslie Banks), an independence insurance investigator who blackmails people who have done bad things to get those insurance payouts, getting himself a cut. The film starts with him running to a warehouse fire where he climbs up the back, recovers the financial books, and then presents them after the fact to the owner with thinly veiled threats that he'll reveal the true state of the business before the fire. It was only worth ten thousand pounds, not the insured thirty thousand. And he's set to start business.
That feels straightforward, except we have this bevy of a supporting cast. There's Bates (Harry Caine), who gets him the information about the fire early. There's his secretary Helen (Carol Goodner). There's this...guy (seriously, I don't really know who he's supposed to be, though, he becomes important later in the film, maybe he's another insurance assessor) Twist (Lawrence Anderson). At the same time, Jim has to negotiate with the insurance companies, mainly represented by Brent (Frank Cellier), who don't trust him, think he's a crook, and think he may have something to do with any claim he helps manage. Brent also has a daughter, Arden (Anne Grey) whom Jim falls in love with while he's racing his horses with his newfound wealth. Yeah, there's a lot, and when most of the men kind of look similarly, it can be hard to figure out who is who for stretches.
The dramatic turn is when Jim decides to take on the underhanded and illegal proposal from Stedding (Francis L. Sullivan), the head of a financial firm who's also a crook and who does raise fires to take advantage of the financial payoffs from the insurance companies. Brent uses Twist to get closer to what's going on. Bates becomes a stool-pigeon. Twist wants to protect Helen because he's sweet on her.
Why do I think this is all kind of dead as a thriller? I wouldn't call the film a complete bomb. The characters, once we get to know who's who, are fine. There are some nice moments here and there. But, the thrills are just absent, and I think it's a combination of the primitive sound mixing (getting more complex with every film, but still pretty archaic), Jim's culpability in everything, making him less of a heroic figure in any light, and the general opaqueness around Twist, who becomes the main point of tension as the central figure under duress.
Essentially, Brent knows that there is a fire raiser gang doing everything, and through Twist he has enough circumstantial and witness-based evidence gathered inappropriately to know who's behind it all. However, to be good enough for the police, he wants to catch the gang in the act (without ever calling the police because obviously, I guess). This is something that Stedding figures out, and suddenly Twist, this guy we've had trouble figuring out why he's in the movie at all, is in trouble, Jim is having a crisis of conscience because the effort before this effort led to the deaths of dozens of people, and the women are all in the background being stiff-upper-lipped about it all while trying to support the guy who's kind of responsible for it all anyway.
It's a very odd mix that doesn't really work, undermining the whole third act as it steams forward into the mechanics of thrillers.
Thrillers are hard and work very specifically, is what I've figured out.
For a quota quickie, this would entertain the masses in between larger features as they spent their Saturday in the theater, escaping the heat. As an actual entertainment to keep one going for about 70 minutes, it doesn't really work. It's handsome, has some good performances, and some delightful miniature work (that is never convincing, but I love miniatures). I mean, it's not good. It fails at being a thriller, its attention more towards creating a complicated character who gets lost in his own film, but it's not bad.
