Two Nights in the Blue Room

I’ve never not enjoyed an old dark house movie. I like my storms full of thunder, my windows drafty, and my companions to represent the foibles and avarice of humanity. And those foreboding abodes! Fear pairs so nicely with elegance. Sure, all these murder mysteries run together. One suit-of-armor-lined hallway dissolves into another; one gasp-and-a-thud from the study is drowned out by a piercing scream from an upstairs bedroom. After years of absorbing these movies, it’s now all one sprawling Dell mapback in my brain, all studded with dead bodies, shadowy figures briefly illuminated by lightning, and phantasmagorical figures disappearing into the walls.

In this vast imaginary estate of terrible deeds and hidden passageways, down the hall from The Mystery of the Yellow Room lies the Secret of the Blue Room. While the Yellow Room mystery has been rehashed numerous times since Gaston Leroux penned it in 1907, including a 1930 Marcel L’Herbier adaptation, the Blue Room came into existence in the 1932 German film Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers. Subsequently, the legend of this Blue Room was explored twice in 1933: Universal’s version Secret of the Blue Room and the Czech Záhada modrého pokoje. Universal remained fixated on the tale, resurrecting it for 1938’s The Missing Guest and in a more swingin’ style in 1944’s Murder in the Blue Room.

I recently watched the original German version and compared it to the first American remake. With the original relying on generic conventions, and the almost shot-for-shot fidelity of the remake, the two movies together act like a dream within a dream. A week after watching, my memory was beginning to interweave the films, swapping actors and locales. From the main title, Secret of the Blue Room runs 65 minutes and 21 seconds. Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers is longer by about 2 minutes and 9 seconds. Not surprisingly, the Americans are a bit more succinct, but that’s nearly a photo-finish.

Was one film superior to the other? At this point, I couldn’t say. I made a few side-by-side comparisons to get a distanced view of the movies.

Sequence 1: A Toast to the Birthday Girl

At the stroke of midnight, Irene von Helldorf (Gloria Stuart on the left) / Irene von Hellberg (Else Elster on the right) is toasted on her 21st birthday. She receives kisses from her guests, including her father (Lionel Atwill / Theodor Loos). Gloria Stuart is adorned in a flamboyant dress while Else Elster is much more modest. The kisses in the American version are prolonged in comparison to the German pecks. Watch closely on the final kiss of the German version to see a telling bit of character development.

Sequence 2: Entering the Blue Room

It is the morning after one of the guests had dared to stay in the cursed Blue Room. With no response from the occupant, they bust open the door to find an empty room with a window open. The set design is clearly more ornate in the German version, from the unique door and frescoed walls to the taller window and numerous paintings; the Blue Room feels imposing. The ruckus in the American version is interrupted by an unusually quiet pan around the empty room, as if to give the audience a chance to survey the scene before the characters reemerge. Fun fact: the two white swans migrated to the United States so they could revise their roles in the American version.

Sequence 3: The Suspects

Commissioner Forster (Edward Arnold) / Kriminalkommissar Schuster (Oskar Sima) grills Betty the Maid. We get to see the suspects all in a row. Kurt Neumann, director of the American version, opts for a slow and steady dolly while Erich Engels’ version is a comparatively harsh pan-and-stop motion.

Of course, this is no competition, and each version has its distinct merits, but if Professor Plum threatened me with a revolver in the conservatory, I’d say I prefer the American remake. But only slightly.

I’ve not seen the Czech film or, regrettably, the one featuring The Three Jazzybelles, and The Missing Guest is due for a rewatch. I’ll have to update this post with five-panel split screen comparisons.