MovieChat Forums > The Thirteenth Guest (1932) Discussion > Major Plot Holes in The Thirteenth Guest...

Major Plot Holes in The Thirteenth Guest? Can Anyone Help Me?

posted 9 years ago by OldFilmLover
2 replies | jump to latest

***Spoiler warning!***

I have to give away some plot elements in order to ask my questions, hence the above warning. But presumably people on the discussion pages have watched the film already, so spoilers shouldn't be a problem.

It seems to me that the opening of the film is misleading, whether accidentally, because of a plain old screenwriting error, or deliberately, to throw the viewer off. When Ginger Rogers enters the house the first time, her character has a vivid memory of where everyone was sitting. But as we learn later, this person is a fake, and therefore wouldn't have had any such memory. We might suppose that she was "filled in" by the conspirators helping her; but even supposing she was fully coached on the seating arrangements, a fake wouldn't have gone through the sentimental reverie we hear in the voiceover. She would have just sat down and waited for the lawyer (who, she believed, had summoned her there). Am I missing something?

I see the purpose of the reverie, of course -- it is exposition to fill the viewer in on the events of 13 years ago. But that still leaves the inconsistencies I've mentioned.

It's also not clear why the fake would have wanted to be involved in the first place. Surely she wouldn't have agreed to change her face if she thought someone was going to try to bump off anyone who looked like she would then look. So she must have been told something else. What was she told, to induce her to change her face? Was she offered a share of the inheritance? And even supposing that she was, who would have benefited from bringing her in as a player? How would a fake daughter help any of the other living relatives to get hold of the money?

We are told later there were two factions involved, but I wasn't able to line up who was on whose side. Apparently the lawyer and the best friend of the brother were involved in one faction, and the actual murderer was on the other side; but then who invited the purported daughter to the house late at night? Someone who thought she was the real daughter, or someone who knew she was a fake? The fake appears to have expected the lawyer, because she names him when she hears footsteps in the house, which suggests that the lawyer knows about the face change and that he is on her side. But why would the lawyer help a non-family member to fake a family member's identity, then lure her to the house to have her bumped off? Presumably, then, it wasn't the lawyer who invited her, but the real murderer, faking a communication from the lawyer. But even that doesn't make sense. The real murderer was apparently quite willing to bump the fake off (believing her to be real) without even interrogating her about the combination, but later keeps the real daughter alive so she can reveal the combination. And it gets worse. The fake daughter had the combination of the safe on her. If the real murderer knew this, the real murderer could have simply gone upstairs after he electrocuted her, and taken the combination out of her pocket or purse, and he could have absconded with the funds that night, and that would have been the end of the story.

The basic inheritance scheme itself is also implausible. If the father wanted to make sure that the daughter wasn't cheated by the other family members of her inheritance, couldn't he have just willed everything to her -- with the stipulation that if she died before she came of age, all the money would go to charity? Then the other family members would have no motive to bump her off. Or was it that he didn't trust the lawyer to carry out the will? Then fine, he could have gone to a different lawyer of good reputation who had no past connection with the family and had that lawyer draw up the will.

What the movie needed was an Agatha Christie moment at the end, where everything was tied together.

Or am I off-base? Does it all tie together? If anyone can explain the whole scheme, I'd be grateful. I found the movie enjoyable -- it never failed to keep up my interest while I was watching it -- but I'm not sure that everything adds up.

[–] skiddoo 8 years ago

SPOILER WARNING!

I'm not great at this but I'll give it a shot. I'm not dedicated enough to watch the movie over and over to catch every detail. After working on this all evening I hope to never watch it again. :)

We see that the imposter only expects to be there a short time because she kept the cab. She hasn't been there before, poking around a little as one might, commenting on the modern improvements and that they might have cleaned the place up a bit. (It seemed pushy to me that she called to find out who put in the phones. But maybe she was a nosy parker and made everything her business. We really didn't have a lot of time to get to know her before she was killed.) She didn't know what the combination was, and showed that by writing on it. She went over in her mind what the players looked like years ago, but we have no way of knowing if she was right. Marie had a miserable time at that dinner with her horrible relatives and her father dropping dead and her mother never being quite right in the head after that, and wouldn't have taken a stroll down memory lane. Clearly the lawyer and the imposter worked together because the imposter arrived with the key and envelope which had been kept in the bank and called the lawyer's name. Only the lawyer knew that Marie was to inherit the lot and it was in the safe. They seemed to have planned to empty the safe and pass the imposter off as Marie and escape after killing Marie. We learned later that another nonfamily member was in on the plan. (It seemed to me healing from major facial surgery would take longer than two months but I'm no expert on that.)

We see shadowy figures getting out of a car. I would guess the two were there to kill Marie but they had to be in league with the lawyer who had given her instructions which she uncharacteristically kept quiet, or how would they know she was going to be there, unless, of course, Marie told someone in the family like her brother and their no good "friend," being unable to keep a secret for long, in which case that was when the uncle and accomplice arrived. And for that matter how did Marie get there so she could take the police car? Perhaps she came by taxi on another side of the house, which explains being able to get inside the house she knew so well and out again undetected. Marie later blabbed to her brother and the imposter's helper, the "friend," about the combination to the safe. The uncle didn't recognize it as a combination but everyone learned about THAT from Marie, her brother, the "friend," the detective, and probably the police. It was the worst kept secret in town.

My feeling about the will was the father wanted to stick it to the relatives while also waiting long enough for Marie to grow up and fend them off, not just physically but emotionally, growing very canny about their avarice and ruthlessness, although apparently not about keeping secrets or judging friends wisely. The fact that it was 13 years probably gave him the idea of the combination and the misleading missing 13th guest and the ambiguity of which chair was number 13. It sounded as if he would have been pleased so many of the guests had been killed in the course of his little game. Rich men in mystery movies are often sadistic in their pleasures. In this case 13 was the lucky number, but very unlucky for all his greedy friends and family. There was no suspicion of foul play in his incredibly timely death so I have to figure his heart was on the verge of giving out or he took poison rather than die of cancer or some such.

In a neat touch, the lawyer and "friend" managed to get a coat and hat just like Marie's for the imposter, probably after Marie went to see the lawyer following his note to her. After the imposter and lawyer were fried, the plan shifted to her relatives killing her.

I have to wonder why the police were so dependent on a private investigator. Maybe the answer is that early movie police were all incompetent. Back then, we are led to believe, they never secured a crime scene during an investigation. Surely even a cursory examination of the house would have shown how the people were electrocuted.

Humorous-looking corpses. Nice touch to kill the lawyer with a phone when he was the one who had them installed, although apparently not THAT phone. He seemingly didn't know where he'd had them put in the house. Funny part where the detective hoped the safe didn't have US Steel stocks, what with the Crash and all. Nope, filled with something that held its value. But then, this was a work of fiction. :)

The red herring seems to have been the relative who was abroad and the empty chair.

If the newer version were online that might clarify things but the only one I found was really a mislabeled 1932 version.

[–] OldFilmLover 8 years ago

Thanks for your great effort on this. Now I have to watch the movie again to see if your explanation makes sense! :-)