Adventure in Diamonds (1940) User Reviews

George Brent, Isa Miranda, and diamonds

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 9 March 2022]

A pilot (George Brent) is taken in by a beautiful woman (Isa Miranda) who is part of a diamond smuggling ring. She is caught and imprisoned, but the police are more interested in her partner (John Loder).

Consequently, she is released from prison on the condition that she works with the pilot to capture the main guy, who also happens to be her boyfriend. They have to pose as man and wife. Can she be trusted?

Pretty good, but it's a story that has been done before in one form or another.

Pleasant Second Feature

[boblipton · 5/10 · 23 March 2022]

George Brent is a British Army flier in South Africa. He is instantly smitten by Isa Miranda. She, it turns out, is stealing diamonds with John Loder. After Brent prevents Nigel Brice from arresting her by pickpocketing the diamonds himself, Bruce and he blackmail Miss Miranda into working with them to apprehend the others in the ring.

George Fitzmaurice's last movie is an odd grab bag of wonderful actors like Elizabeth Patterson, Cecil Kellaway and Ernest Truex, with occasional short documentaries on harness racing with ostriches and the washing of 'blue mud' to uncover the diamonds. It's a pleasant second with little relationship to anything, but directed and performed amiably by a good cast and crew.

Diiamonds are a crook's best friend.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 24 April 2017]

Is this murder mystery? Docudrama? Screwball comedy with a hint of romance? Frankly I'm not sure after making through this silly murder mystery with a hint of popular science and yes, a bit of romance. I've seen romantic screwball comedies before where the leads found themselves involved in murder, and often, unless it was Nick and Nora, it was a convoluted mess. In this case, there's too much of a mood swing, as every few minutes, there appears to be a switch in theme, in tempo, in structure.

O.K., I was fascinated to get a hint as how diamond mines are explored, from the separation of dirt and rock, good rocks from bad rocks, and how rocks with diamonds inside are discovered. But this flip floppy film goes all over the place in a fairly short time, giving me amusement every time that Elizabeth Patterson and Nigel Bruce come on screen, but rather uninterested in the romantic entanglements of George Brent and Isa Miranda. The fact that the very American Patterson is supposed to be the aunt of Miranda is totally far fetched, and in their scenes together, Patterson totally upstages the underwhelming Isa.

I also never quite believed that Miranda was on the total up and up, paused with the slimy John Loder. And then Cecil Kellaway shows up to add to the intrigue, but by this time, you've been distracted by all the silliness that jars you totally out of the story. Basically the type of film that Dietrich might have gotten away with, this lacks real spark and gives the character actors more to play off with their scene stealing charm than the lack of chemistry between the two leads. That's not to say that George Brent is out- shined here; he's just fine, but I really longed for more detail on the plot, to really understand what was behind the mystery, and mostly a leading lady who didn't seem to be a gorgeous block of ice melting in front of your eyes.

Uneven style but when it's witty, it works!

[loloandpete · 8/10 · 24 January 2022]

At only an hour and a quarter, this is evidently a B feature and despite its uneven tone it's a good watch with some lovely attention to detail in the character acting stakes. There is a great deal of wittiness and comedy to be found and when this is front and centre, it is a really enjoyable piece. One's attention drifts when it becomes po faced and takes itself too seriously, and we can certainly do without the in depth documentary style lecture on the refinement of diamonds. But the casting from the leads down to the cameos is exceptional. George Brent has an easy charm as a leading man and a good sense of humour. Certainly an underrated star, though Bette Davis realised his quality, he was her favourite leading man and appeared opposite her 11 times! Isa Miranda as the bad girl turned good, has exoticism, great chemistry with Brent and spars with him delightfully throughout. Chemistry is also shared between Brent and Nigel Bruce, the latter flitting between fun, roguish charm and stern authoritarianism. Elizabeth Patterson is also good value as an incorrigable old crim. One of the most enjoyable sequences is when Brent and Miranda are charged with infiltrating a diamond smuggling gang and are given the tip off that their contact is a whistler, which leads to some jolly mix ups, including a meeting with a dour old couple played by E E Clive and Vera Lewis in a gem of a comic cameo appearance. When they finally meet the real contact, it is Rex Evans, a pianist who specialises in comedic songs at the keyboard and even improvises his dialogue in the form of song in a real scene stealing turn. If you ignore the occasional jarring notes of style, there is a great deal to enjoy here.