This is a competent, if somewhat dated, little mystery, notable chiefly for Rathbone's portrayal of Philo Vance. Although it still falls far short of the memorable character of the books, this seems to be about as close as the *real* Vance ever got to the silver screen.
The real mystery, to me, is why Hollywood persisted in making one movie after another using the plots and names of SS Van Dine's wonderful books, yet NEVER adapting the key factor that made those books stand out: i.e. the unique character of the detective. Philo Vance is an aristocrat, an aesthete, a dilettante, an intellectual dabbler, and a very reluctant detective. The way he solves crimes is a reflection of his personality: he approaches each one as a work of art, and looks for the 'signature style' of its creator.
The method actually works. I've watched many a mystery film and correctly spotted the perpetrator purely by following Vance's lead, matching the style of the crime against the personalities of the suspects. This unusually profound insight makes Vance a very important figure in the mystery genre: one of the very few that successfully blends character, drama, logic and even philosophy. I'd put Philo Vance close behind Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown as a literary detective, and a million miles ahead of such shallow creations as Poirot. (The years have only added to his appeal; the books now also serve as a fascinating glimpse of a genteel, aristocratic New York of days gone by.)
Amazingly, none of the Vance films even remotely attempts to capture any of this. It's a bit like making Sherlock Holmes movies in which Holmes isn't English, has no friend named Watson, and does no deduction, but instead becomes merely a guy in a funny hat who solves crimes by good luck and beating confessions out of suspects.
The worst offenders, oddly, are the best-known Vance films... most notably the execrable Kennel Murder Case, which reduces Vance to a sort of less-funny Thin Man. The Bishop Murder Case, thankfully, contains at least a vague acknowledgment of the true Vance. Rathbone is certainly a valid choice to play the part (far more appropriate than William Powell!), and in fact renders the character reasonably well... subject to the limitations of a script that barely sketches the devilishly clever thought processes of Van Dine's Vance. If anything, Rathbone is perhaps a bit too intense... one of Vance's many winning qualities is a distaste for taking himself too seriously.
Now, I wouldn't normally complain that a film fails to match the book upon which it is ostensibly based. Naturally, a film must be judged on its own merits. But the Vance films discard everything about Vance that makes him interesting in the first place, and none of them substitutes any particular value of its own. That's not only disappointing to fans of the books, it's unlikely to be much more satisfying to anyone seeking purely cinematic accomplishments. Any hope of drama or cleverness is flattened to the basest 'B' movie levels. Van Dine's Chinese-puzzle plots provide the only remaining spark of interest, but what use are they, revealed flatly and monotonously instead of being sensuously unraveled by Vance's left-handed intellect?
Hopefully, the great Philo Vance will someday be rendered more faithfully on the screen. But for now, The Bishop Murder case, for all its limitations, is about the only Vance film worth seeing. Unless you're simply a die-hard fan of bland Hollywood mysteries, your time would be better spent reading most any of the books.
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