The Firebird Reviews

Initial suspense is well managed in this mystery drama dealing with the murder of a Viennese bounder, Cortez, a self-adoring mime actor whose avocation is the seduction of a succession of ladies. The plot unfolds through the medium of the family in the flat above the actor's own: diplomat Atwill, wife Teasdale, and daughter Louise. Their perceptions of their downstairs neighbor are conditioned in part by his frequent renditions of the same music, selections from Stravinsky's "The Firebird," long and loudly played. Teasdale's antipathy to the music, which she views as vulgar, suggests that perhaps she doth protest too much. Is she the current conquest of the cad, signaled by the melodic theme that the coast is clear for another romantic--if illicit--liaison? The lilting strains of the theme music sound again. Dissolve to the doorway of the dressing-gowned deceiver. Greeting his unrevealed inamorata, he ushers her into his pit of passion. End of actor; the final curtain descends for now-corpse Cortez, as we discover with the visit of police inspector Smith to the suspects upstairs. Whodunit? Who wrote the finale to the philanderer? A trysting Teasdale? An outraged Atwill? A lustful Louise? In a disappointing denouement, deductive details disclose the dame who did the deadly deed, a disillusioned darling of the dastard.