La maison jaune de Rio

Charles Vanel is now world-wide famous for his fifties movies (Clouzot's "le salaire de la peur" "la vérité" and "les diaboliques" -his character in the latter spawned the Colombo figure-) but his career began in the silent era ,with notable works such as Jean Grémillon 's "Maldone" With the coming of the talkies,he went on to become one of the greatest French actors, whose career lasted till the late seventies.

He 's here cast in a dual role, an oriental thug a la Fu Manchu and an actor in love with his co-star Anita. It has not to be taken seriously :Fu -Manchu meets "the perils of Pauline" best describes it. Vanel,made up as anasiatic villain is guaranteed to net nothing but horse -laughs .

But interest lies elsewere : in the French early thirties, most of the movies were often adaptations of plays,static, talky and very dull. This one smartly blends fiction and unrealistic reality :for instance ,there's a successful unexpected twist which makes the scenes in King Fu's den a spoof on the would be yellow peril ;the rest of the movie follows suit: are the characters in a play or are they in jeopardy in the event? There's a good use of shadows and light, the German co-director Karl Grune being obviously from the expressionist school ;he was neither Lang ,nor Murnau ,but his movie was not derivative in the early thirties.