Kidskycom
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Tobias Burrows
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
grainstorms
The Clairvoyant is a surprising fantasy film. It's enthralling and very entertaining. It's a wise, sometimes witty look, without smoke and mirrors, at crystal balls and the public acceptance of prophets. While made some four score years ago, it rarely shows its age. Its actors, including a Claude Rains not resting on his laurels after his triumph in The Invisible Man, are excellent. And the action never lets up.Rains plays a fortune teller appearing in English music halls and not having much of a success. Suddenly all that changes, when he apparently is really able to foresee the future. Employing his distinctive voice to good stead, the talented Rains has both a vulnerable yet powerful presence. What's most interesting is that he, and the other actors, including a lovely Fay Wray, are three- dimensional and eminently likable. One cares what happens to them.The writing is crisp, without the hokey staginess afflicting many movies of the period. If all this weren't enough, there is enough action for three movies, including some grand and memorable scenes that will leave you gasping for air.As other reviewers have noted, the director was Maurice Elvey, the most prolific of all English film directors, directing nearly 200 movies between 1913 and 1957. His no- nonsense professionalism undoubtedly was responsible for this movie's remarkable absence of tedious scenes, the bane of British films in this period. Instead, he's given us a fast-moving streamliner that deserves to be more well-known, both in the fantasy genre and in the body of Claude Rains' film accomplishments. A terrific way to spend a rainy afternoon. Trivia note: the uncredited producer was Michael Balcon, the future grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis, and grandfather-in-law of Rebecca Miller, daughter of the playwright Arthur Miller.
Robert J. Maxwell
This production, in which I see no evidence of a particularly low budget, reminds me a little of the early Hitchcock films. Strictly convergent evolution, I assume, but there's a scene in a crowded music hall with the audience shouting questions at a man on the stage (Raines) who is supposed to be able to foresee the future. And it's old, scratchy, and black and white, like most prints of "The 39 Steps." There's a generous amount of overacting too.The story is pretty good. It must be since it's showed up so often in other venues. "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" and "Nightmare Alley", for instance. A fake stage clairvoyant begins to have unbidden but genuine visions. He gets a swelled head. Then he gets into trouble and winds up in court.But this story is stronger than some of Hitchock's British thrillers. What it lacks is Hitchcock's artistry, his willingness to play with scenes, to gin up their excitement so that, as he once put it, "there isn't a dry seat in the house." Maurice Elvey directs in a plain vanilla style. Nobody gets lost on the desolate Scottish bens; nobody slowly pokes through a rack of wines; there are no swooping shots that begin on the moon and wind up with a close up of a fist clutching a key. The special effects are hardly tawdry though. When Raines gets his final synapse-fusing vision on the witness stand, his eyeballs glow like twin arc lights.There is a sub plot involving two women. One is his wife, Fay Wray, a few years after having her hampering outer garments peeled off by King Kong, and she was only 28 when this was released. She's astonishingly attractive, in a glandular yet virginal way. It's a compelling combination, often found in Canadian women, I've noticed. Think Ruby Keeler.Then Jane Baxter enters the scene. She's only friendly and admiring before she falls in love with Raines. I don't know why she falls in love with him. I'm taller than Raines, better looking, and very witty, especially when drunk. Why don't beautiful rich women fall in love with me? One of the better scenes -- the physical disasters aside -- is when the two women first meet. Raines and Wray come home to find Jane Baxter sitting there with a big smile. Raines is so stupid -- so out of touch with emotional disasters -- that his clairvoyance doesn't tell him, ever, that sparks are going to fly. Wray's happy grin turns upside down the moment she spots the other woman. Waves of hatred emanate from her.That silly sounding rivalry though is more than just another sub-plot shoe horned into the narrative to fill up the time and add some affective content. Baxter is more than just "the other woman." She's actually a nice lady and it is vibrations from her nearness that set Raines off on his clairvoyant toots.I don't think I'll spell out the ending but it raises an interesting question. Suppose there were real clairvoyants. Suppose they publicly predict a disaster will happen in, say, a subway tunnel. Suppose the workers find this unnerving enough that the foretold accident takes place. In other words, the prophecy is self fulfilling. Who's responsible for the disaster?
gavin6942
Maximus (Claude Rains), a small-time music hall mind reader, has frightening flashes of precognition; but he cannot predict or control them ...until he realizes he has them in the presence of Christine (Jane Baxter), the daughter of a publisher, who makes Rene (Fay Wray), his wife, wretchedly jealous.How can you go wrong with pairing Claude Rains ("The Invisible Man") with Fay Wray ("King Kong")? You simply cannot. Jane Baxter adds a little class to the mix (while perhaps not as well known, she was an actress for an impressive fifty years).Worth noting is that Maurice Elvey (1887-1967) was the most prolific film director in British history. He directed 195 films between 1913 and 1957. During the silent film era he directed as many as twenty films per year. Wow. This was probably the one he is most known for today, though "Transatlantic Tunnel" takes a close second.
moonspinner55
Another typically solid production from Britain's Gainsborough Pictures, this adaptation of Ernest Lothar's novel has a terribly dated third act set in the British Royal Court but is otherwise quite entertaining. Claude Rains is fittingly mercurial as a phony psychic who is suddenly hailed as a prophet after he predicts both a train crash and a racehorse winner; however, after he attempts to save miners from a shaft he is certain will collapse, the newspapers and public turn on him as a publicity seeker. There's an odd thread involving a strange young woman who proves to be a conduit to Rains' psychic mind--her hypnotic stare provides him with the power he needs to go into a trance--yet the movie just shucks it off as second-hand business. Instead, a subplot with Claude's faithful but jealous wife is given an over-abundance of screen-time (it just makes her look like a ninny); and when Rains is lauded by a prestigious men's club, we're not sure exactly what they're celebrating or offering to him. Still, the direction is very tight (even though the crowd shots and second-unit footage is sloppy)...and when Rains goes into one of his wide-eyed, transcendental arias, look out! **1/2 from ****
