Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

dougdoepke A con-man works his way up the fortune-telling ladder only to find his life is not made better.The con-man role is tailor made for the commanding Warren William. His Chandra The Fortune Teller is such a masterful stage presence who in the audience would dare challenge his psychic gift. Never mind that his shifty confederate Frank (Jenkins) is feeding him answers telephonically. It makes for a heckuva show, and the rubes keep coming, sometimes ruefully so. Oddly, I found myself being anxious when there's problems with the messaging relay from Frank. That is, do I really want Chandra to succeed in his criminal con job. Yet I couldn't help being torn. Anyway, notice in passing, how the map shows Chandra first touring smaller border state towns, nothing big yet. That will come later, once he hones his act. Cummings (Sylvia) makes an attractive love interest, even if the script presents her flip-flops in a pretty implausible light. Also, the familiar Allen Jenkins plays his part pretty straight, unlike many of his comedic side-kick parts. Now, you might think, courtesy the screenplay, that every upper-class husband in New York has a silken mistress, leaving a broken-hearted wife behind. Then too, I suspect that dark suspicion played well with Depression era audiences. But once Chandra goes big-time, there are no more rubes, only the sleek and well upholstered. Frankly, I didn't like the big turnaround that comes last. After all, this is pre-Code, so abject mea-culpa endings aren't required as they soon would be. Up to that point, the story really deserves a climax more ironic than the implausibly conventional. (Check out the similar Nightmare Alley {1947} for a more apt ending.)Anyway, William has to be one of the neglected delights of that long ago period. Passing away in 1948 means he had no post-war credits to speak of. Thus he's largely unknown even to many old movie fans. It's that pre-Code period, before his serial programmers (Perry Mason, the Lone Wolf), where he really shines, usually as an ethically challenged big-wig (Employee's Entrance {1933}; Skyscraper Souls {1932}). And there's no one better. Plus, he's good enough here to make even the flawed, albeit interesting, script well worth watching.

blanche-2 Warren William is "The Mind Reader" in this pre-code film also starring Constance Cummings and Allen Jenkins.William is a snake oil salesman (a con artist) during the Depression, using his skills of persuasion to sell products. One day, his associate, Frank (Jenkins) is reading about mind readers and thinks it might be a great profession, so William becomes Chandra. He is very successful. When he meets the beautiful Sylvia (Cummings), he falls in love. After an unfortunate incident, he promises her that if she'll stay with him, he'll quit. But the con and the money are seductive.This is an early talkie and very well directed by Roy del Ruth. Unlike some early talkies, it's not stagy and the actors don't have trouble with the dialogue rhythm. Often in these early films, there are big pauses in between lines, but not here.Warren William is one of my favorites. He played these dark characters in silents and the early years of sound, and then we were able to hear his wonderful laugh and see his humor in films like the Perry Mason series (though he and the scripts weren't Erle Stanley Gardner's idea of Perry Mason), Satan Met a Lady, The Lone Wolf series, and others.Constance Cummings was both beautiful and amazing, and she does a lovely job here. She deserved to be a bigger star, but she left Hollywood early on and moved with her husband to England, where she made some films and appeared in her husband's (Benn Levy) plays. When she was around 70, she appeared on Broadway in a play about a stroke victim, Wings, for which she won a Tony Award. This was a great opportunity to see her on film.Interesting film, kind of a forerunner to "Nightmare Alley" in a way - those movie fortunetellers are always fakes.

kidboots Constance Cummings was one of the most beautiful ingenues of the early thirties and the bonus was she could really act. "The Mind Reader" was typical of the Warner Bros. pre-coders, this one tackling the charlatans and phoney mediums that drifted through the country carnivals eager to con innocent folk out of their hard earned money. Warren Williams plays one of those who, along with his crooked buddies (Allan Jenkins and Clarence Muse) go from town to town - pulling teeth in Pine Bluff, selling hair tonic in Nashville but in Topeka they find a new racket and now, posing as "Chandra the Great - Mind Reader", he is out to "tell the chumps what they want to hear"!!Pretty Sylvia (Cummings) is one he advises "a great change will be coming into your life" - the next night she is employed as his secretary and it is her job to answer the hundreds of letters he receives from people begging him for advice. Things come crashing down when Jenny (Mayo Methot, in yet another dynamic performance), bursts in to tell him that his advice of rejecting the man she really loved wrecked both their lives!! Sylvia then realises that her husband (yes, she is now married to him) is a despicable fake and feels the only way their love can survive is for him to go straight.The second half of the movie sees him embracing a new racket, as selling brushes may be honest but financially unrewarding. A chance meeting with Jenkins, who is now a chauffeur to a cheating couple (Natalie Moorehead is the wife) sees Chandra become a very up-market spiritualist whose clients are happy to pay thousands to catch out their cheating spouses.Constance Cummings gave all her parts intelligence - even if it was there or not. By the mid 1930s she was being hailed as the next big emotional star but she had already secured life long happiness by marriage to Ben Levy and by the end of the thirties was happily living in England. In any other actress's hands Sylvia would have seemed a bit of a twit - blindly marrying him and then not realising he was the famous mind reader that the whole city was talking about (didn't she wonder where all the extra money was coming from)!!! There is a confrontation with an angry client in his office and he blows down to Mexico leaving Sylvia to bear the blame of the shooting. Warren William does what he does so well, playing a ruthless crook who, nevertheless, has sparks of redeeming qualities, enough so the ending isn't a surprise. One of the "conned" woman is Ruthelma Stevens, so good as the perfect secretary in "The Circus Queen Murder".

MartinHafer The idea of having Warren William play this part was an inspired choice--he was perfect for this part. However, no matter how interesting the idea was and how good William was, the plot just kind of fizzled--and late in the film the picture really lost its way. It's a shame, as the movie could have been very good.The film starts with William selling a variety of bogus products throughout the country. Eventually, he hits on the idea of becoming a fortune teller. He pretends to read the future but mostly just makes things up or has his assistant (Allan Jenkins) investigate and dig up information on people so he can appear psychic. After a while, he learns that a lot of people have been hurt or even killed because of his 'predictions'--culminating in a terrifically harrowing altercation with Mayo Methot (one-time wife of Humphrey Bogart). In the process, he ends up losing his wife--a woman who had thought William COULD predict the future but has since learned he was a phony.Now, at this point of the film, I really liked the movie. The scene with Methot was intense and wild. But, somehow, the great script with the sociopathic leading man lost its way...very badly. First, while William continues to hurt people again and again, even after he loses his wife, he eventually and completely out of the blue announces during one of his shows that he's a fake!! Why would such a selfish and despicable man do this?! People had already died because of him and he knew it--yet kept on lying and swindling people. So why later announce you are a fraud?! In addition, although William's wife (Constance Cummings) left him because he was such an evil man, why did she later in the film love him so unconditionally--even after she knew he had shot someone (and she had no idea whether it was premeditated or an accident)? And, why at the end of the film did William turn himself in to save Cummings when the police thought she was the killer?! This made zero sense--and the film just spiraled into an incomprehensible mess in every possible way.The movie is like a movie that began without a finished script. The first half was good but they just fudged the ending--and it sure looked bad! Pathetic and irritating, as the film had been so good in the first half--darn good.For a much better film about fake psychics, try watching "The Clairvoyant" (1934) with Claude Rains. While the plot is similar, what they do with the story in the second half is satisfying and worth seeing--"The Mind Reader" isn't!