fung0 This is a competent, if somewhat dated, little mystery, notable chiefly for Rathbone's portrayal of Philo Vance. Although it still falls far short of the memorable character of the books, this seems to be about as close as the *real* Vance ever got to the silver screen.The real mystery, to me, is why Hollywood persisted in making one movie after another using the plots and names of SS Van Dine's wonderful books, yet NEVER adapting the key factor that made those books stand out: i.e. the unique character of the detective. Philo Vance is an aristocrat, an aesthete, a dilettante, an intellectual dabbler, and a very reluctant detective. The way he solves crimes is a reflection of his personality: he approaches each one as a work of art, and looks for the 'signature style' of its creator.The method actually works. I've watched many a mystery film and correctly spotted the perpetrator purely by following Vance's lead, matching the style of the crime against the personalities of the suspects. This unusually profound insight makes Vance a very important figure in the mystery genre: one of the very few that successfully blends character, drama, logic and even philosophy. I'd put Philo Vance close behind Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown as a literary detective, and a million miles ahead of such shallow creations as Poirot. (The years have only added to his appeal; the books now also serve as a fascinating glimpse of a genteel, aristocratic New York of days gone by.)Amazingly, none of the Vance films even remotely attempts to capture any of this. It's a bit like making Sherlock Holmes movies in which Holmes isn't English, has no friend named Watson, and does no deduction, but instead becomes merely a guy in a funny hat who solves crimes by good luck and beating confessions out of suspects.The worst offenders, oddly, are the best-known Vance films... most notably the execrable Kennel Murder Case, which reduces Vance to a sort of less-funny Thin Man. The Bishop Murder Case, thankfully, contains at least a vague acknowledgment of the true Vance. Rathbone is certainly a valid choice to play the part (far more appropriate than William Powell!), and in fact renders the character reasonably well... subject to the limitations of a script that barely sketches the devilishly clever thought processes of Van Dine's Vance. If anything, Rathbone is perhaps a bit too intense... one of Vance's many winning qualities is a distaste for taking himself too seriously.Now, I wouldn't normally complain that a film fails to match the book upon which it is ostensibly based. Naturally, a film must be judged on its own merits. But the Vance films discard everything about Vance that makes him interesting in the first place, and none of them substitutes any particular value of its own. That's not only disappointing to fans of the books, it's unlikely to be much more satisfying to anyone seeking purely cinematic accomplishments. Any hope of drama or cleverness is flattened to the basest 'B' movie levels. Van Dine's Chinese-puzzle plots provide the only remaining spark of interest, but what use are they, revealed flatly and monotonously instead of being sensuously unraveled by Vance's left-handed intellect?Hopefully, the great Philo Vance will someday be rendered more faithfully on the screen. But for now, The Bishop Murder case, for all its limitations, is about the only Vance film worth seeing. Unless you're simply a die-hard fan of bland Hollywood mysteries, your time would be better spent reading most any of the books.

Neil Doyle When you consider that sound had only come in a couple of years before THE BISHOP MURDER CASE, the fact that the film still has a soundtrack that needs restoration is no surprise. But I did manage to see a good print of the film on TCM and the gleaming B&W photography belied the fact that this was made in 1930.But my sole purpose for watching was to see what BASIL RATHBONE looked like in an early detective role as Philo Vance. The mystery itself seemed a lot like an Agatha Christie whodunit because the murders were staged by a clever killer who just wasn't smart enough to outwit Philo Vance. The final revelation involves a glass of wine with poison in it ("the vessel with the pessel" film that Rathbone did with Danny Kaye comes to mind here). Rathbone's cleverness and manner of solving the crime is reminiscent of the way he played Sherlock Holmes so well in all those Sherlock films.He also had a crisp delivery that was lacking in the other players. Only ROLAND YOUNG managed to sound as if silent films were a thing of the past. The others were clearly still in the silent mode of acting which makes Rathbone's performance even more remarkable.Not a great mystery by any means and the sets, despite some fine photography, are on the primitive side--but addicts of detective stories should enjoy this one.

Panamint Good effort given the primitive technology. This very early talkie does not creak like most of them did, and you believe that the same team could have done much better only a few years later.Check out the innovative scene of Hyams at the three-way mirror. Beautiful scene that directors even today should view for technique. There are several little skilled touches added to this film that make you realize that the only limitation on the talent was the primitive lower-than-low tech.Rathbone and Hyams seem more modern than the movie and they definitely do not creak.Must reluctantly give it a "5" because of old set-bound look of the film and the lack of music but it is rewarding if you can overlook such drawbacks.

tedg Spoilers herein.Movies today are a large part of how we define ourselves. But many of the structural elements of today's films are a result of punctuated evolution, times where decisions were made. These were fast and permanent. I recommend this film not for its intrinsic value - after all few films have value outside of their fueling of life; but because you can retrospectively witness one of these cusps in structural change.The silent film was a matter of shadow puppets with humans, hardly `real,' very abstract in fact. Then film went through a spurt in which certain ideas warred for supremacy. You can see some of that here.The most obvious battle is over the notion of narrative engagement. I could have chosen three or four films as my example, but I selected this because it has Basil Rathbone. He would later become an archetype in the form that would win. And this has a remarkable reference to three external forms that were part of the battle. By the time of this film, books had already been taken completely over by the detective story. The reason is because it offered a new type of engagement with the reader: the reader and writer struggle with one another to determine the vision into what happens next. Nominally the writer is playing a game on his turf, but as experienced, the reader can win. The detective provides a "science" based avatar, often moving in alliances between writer and reader but mostly for the reader.The writer of the Philo Vance books was a great student of this theory and was astonishingly popular. He is forgotten today because so many masters subsequently built on his theories, but one might credit him with being the first real theorist of narrative engagement by detection, sort of a science of observation of the science of observation.His books were `picked up' for movies. They translated badly because the adapters actually thought the story was important and were ignorant of the game. Nevertheless, the viewer of this adaptation can see reference to three templates for Van Dine's ideas: the game of chess, the plays of Ibsen, and the self-referential irony of `fairy tales.'His `Kennel Case' was a far better story, redone as `Calling Philo Vance.' But this one is much more interesting because it is about itself, and unwittingly about the theory of reflection in film narrative. We have scientists, chess players and detectives all cast as rather much the same, presumably all capable of `writing' the case, as the writings appear in snippets. (True to dramatic conventions of the time, the women have no minds at all.) Each is cast as primary suspect, then killed (or attempted so). See also the abstract nature of the staging. While the exteriors used real buildings with normal sized floors and windows, the interiors are extraordinary: ceilings at least thirty feet high, with windows as large. Doors ten feet high, but stairs that only raise one six feet or so. Desks that must be twenty feet broad.And one can incidentally see the acting style carried over from the silents, a reminder that this is transitional film.Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.