William Powell

Luise Rainer

Robert Young

Maureen O'Sullivan

Frank Morgan

Henry Stephenson

Bernadene Hayes

Donald Kirke

Douglass Dumbrille

Charles Waldron

Ian Wolfe

Barnett Parker

Frank Reicher

Bert Roach

Paul Porcasi

E. E. Clive

Emma Dunn

Frank Conroy

George Davis

Carole Landis

Theodore von Eltz

Russ Powell

Torben Meyer

John Picorri

Alphonse Martell

Franklyn Farnum

Olaf Hytten

Rollo Lloyd

Roland Varno

Dorothea Wolbert

Spencer Charters

Gino Corrado

Clarence Wilson

Philo McCullough

Leonard Carey

Jules Cowles

King Baggot

Sidney Bracey

Alexander Pollard

Edmund Mortimer

George Fitzmaurice

Harold Goldman

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Conrad A. Nervig

Cedric Gibbons

Adrian

John W. Considine Jr.

Harold Rosson

Franz Waxman

Herman J. Mankiewicz

Drama

History

Romance

The Emperor's Candlesticks

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

United States of America

CinemaSerf

Based on the Baroness Orczy tale of Russian Imperial espionage, this is actually quite a fun, if insubstantial, historical drama. It all centres around attempts to free a Polish dissident from prison. At the time, Poland was a vassal of the Czar, and so a group of influential Poles coerce the Grand Duke "Peter" (Robert Young) to write to his father imploring his intervention. What's this got to do with candlesticks, you might think? Well these clever little ornate gadgets have secret compartments - easy enough to smuggle a letter in. When they are inadvertently moved, then sold-on a few times it falls to Polish agent "Wolensky" (William Powell) to stay one step ahead of his Czarist protagonist "Countess Mironova" (Luise Rainer) and recover them before their secret is discovered and heads start to roll. Of course, you just know that these two are going to start to fall for each other, and sadly that is where the thriller element of this film starts to give way to the romantic one, and once we are in full slush mode, the whole thing rather falls away as we approach an ending that offers us little by way of jeopardy. It's a good looking film, though. Plenty of attractive people in attractive costumes; there is some chemistry between Powell and Rainer and Frank Morgan is quite fun as "Baron Suroff". Franz Waxman provides us with a rather unremarkably derivative score though - a sort of "Scarlet Empress" (1934) type affair that doesn't really help the rather uninspiring dialogue. It's my kind of genre and the Baroness did know how to conjure up a good intrigue, but this is all just a bit too join-the dots.

English