Surprisingly modern feeling semi-comic whodunnit

This film is surprisingly modern feeling for the early-mid 1930s. It seems to lack the excess melodrama of a lot of early Hollywood, and the dialogue seems snappy and sassy. Even the people and social behavior seem somehow contemporary. You could almost see yourself sitting down with Powell and Loy and having a hoot of an evening. Their habits, attitudes and mannerisms didn't seem to be afflicted with the stilted formalism I'd expect of the era.

The dinner party scene that wraps up the mystery seems a little forced from a storytelling perspective, but they manage to make it seem realistic, too -- most of the people there were forced to be there by the cops, making the whole arranged event seem mostly legitimate narrative.

What always kind of amazes me about 1930s pictures is that some chunk of the actors were born well into the 19th century. Edward Ellis, who played the elder Wynant character, was born in 1870, the same year as the real-life young Carrie Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie. It's kind of a fascinating juxtaposition to think that someone from the Little House on the Prairie era was also acting in talking motion pictures.