The Ex-Mrs. Bradford

Dr Bradford would like to get on with his practice, but his ex-wife Paula writes murder mysteries and has found the strange deaths at the racetrack far too interesting to leave alone. She pulls him into the investigation without asking, and the two of them start working their way through jockeys, vets and bookmakers. The method of the killings is not an ordinary one, and every new body makes it murkier. Stephen Roberts's film is one of the thirties' favourite shapes: a murder, a couple, and a duel of dialogue that never lets up. William Powell was playing the same type in the Thin Man series in those years; here he has Jean Arthur opposite him and she sets the tempo. The murder gets solved, but what the film is really curious about is whether this divorced pair will end up back together.