Candles at Nine (1944)

As Good As It Gets

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Unfortunately Jessie Matthews suffered two major blows to her life and career in the late thirties.Her marriage to Sonnie Hale broke down and Gaumont British ceased film production.She made no major films till this one.She doesn't appear till 20 minutes had gone.Then comes a stylish musical number.Then unfortunately it is the mystery film that takes over.It runs on familiar lines and really does Jessie no favours.Little wonder that she appeared in future in film cameos yv and radio.I was fortunate enough to see her at the NFT in London talking about her career.

To someone of my generation aged 69 I can only remember Jessie Mathews from her playing "Mrs Dale" from "Mrs Dale's Diary on 1950s BBC radio.This is the first DVD I have to show her dancing, singing & acting.Yes I too thought the actress playing Mrs Julia Carvery (Mrs Hope) was a parody of Judith Anderson's magnificent "Mrs Danvers" from "Rebecca" especially when she tried to get Jessie Mathews to throw herself out of the window.There is a cameo performance by a very young Patricia Hayes who plays Gwendolyn a daily servant girl and forever in my mind as Mrs Cravatte from Hancocks Half Hour 1950s TV version.Yes £100,000 was a lot of "dosh" in 1944 and Jessie Mathews' unscrupulous relatives are all after a share, despite being left nothing by the late Mr.Hope.If you have seen "The Way to the Stars (1945)" there is a character in that film called "Tinkerbell".In "Candles at Nine" he has a ne'er-do well brother (Reginald Purdell) and they parody Flanders & Swan at one stage giving a humorous recital.Fortunately Jessie Mathews has the help of an ex-detective William Gordon who saves her from these murderous relatives.In "Millions Like Us" the actor who plays the doctor here plays the butler Griggs who tries to bump off William Gordon.And contrary to "Writers Reign's" review there are a few references to wartime shortages i.e. only 5 inches of bathwater, and turning off lights.It has a mildly funny ending and I awarded it 6 stars.

If you're an ardent Jessie Matthews fan you will like Candles At Nine because Jessie does get to do one song and dance number. But other than that this is one very confused film. It seems like it might have started out as a satire on these inheritance murder stories, but got lost on the way.As is typical in these stories old Elliot Makeham has gathered his closest relatives for a reading of a rather sarcastic will. After putting them all down including his Mrs. Danvers like housekeeper Beatrice Lehman and butler John Salew, Makeham reads that the fortune which he acquired through some shady means is going to a young performer played by Jessie Matthews who is not present. Later that night Makeham is killed during a false alarm panic over a supposed fire.But for Matthews to inherit everything she has to stay in the creepy old house with the creepy old staff for a month. Why do people write such nonsense in wills? Still that allows Lehman and Salew to do their dirty work.Candle At Nine is one confused film that should have stuck to being a murder mystery or gone for broader satire. As it is it's not that good in either genre.

Oh dear! This is one that will appeal only to the most ardent Matthews fan. What possessed anyone to contemplate another Wicked Housekeeper movie crossed with the Conditional Will in which a heroine inherits a fortune BUT ONLY if she stays for one month in The Old Dark House that comes complete with its own Mrs Danvers, here phoned in by Beatrix Lehman (presumably Gale Sondergaard and Judith Anderson were playing two of the witches in a Road Company Macbeth) is anyone's guess. The film suffers from terminal sloppiness; made and presumably set in the middle of the Second World War it makes virtually no reference to shortages and ordinary people think nothing of driving to and from the country at a time when a major celebrity, Ivor Novello, was imprisoned for doing the same thing and Jesse Matthews is portrayed as an ordinary working girl yet one who lives in a lavish, beautifully appointed flat; for no apparent reason the hero figure, ostensibly employed as a Turf Commissioner, takes it upon himself to 'protect' Matthews yet never reveals just how he knew that the butler, Grimes, was planning to shoot her (or where a butler would get a gun, for that matter) and when he himself is knocked out by Grimes and left trussed in a locked room by butler and housekeeper neither he nor Matthews mention this when, having been freed by Matthews who took an axe to the door unmolested by Lehman, they meet Lehman at breakfast. Okay, it was wartime and audiences weren't too choosy, but this really won't do.