We weren’t particularly drawn by this photo-illustrated poster for the cheapie crime mystery Girl in 313, but when we learned that it had a fifty-five minute running time we figured, “Yeah, we can squeeze that in.” It opens with a jewelry model fainting at a showing and, in the confusion, someone snatching a $50,000 brooch from around her neck. Insurance investigator Kent Taylor thinks it was Florence Rice, and sets out to retreieve the item. The two are drawn to each other, and during their flirtatious cat and mouse encounters become closer, even as Taylor keeps trying to secure the brooch. But does Rice really have it? She’s strangely untroubled for a jewel thief who has an investigator on her trail.
We liked this movie, but at less than an hour you should go into it with modest expectations. There isn’t time for major subplots or deep character development. You do get a bit of misdirection, which every mystery needs, no matter how short. Both Taylor and Rice are fine in their roles, which is no surprise—Taylor, though only thirty-four, had already appeared in more than sixty films, including the fascinating White Woman, and Rice, no amateur either, had featured in more than thirty. When you add to their shared experience a workable script and solid direction, a decent result is almost pre-ordained, even if it’s just a b-production.
What’s never pre-ordained in vintage cinema are the surprising and illuminating sights to which you’re occasionally treated—oftentimes things you could never have imagined. In this case, the leader of a rumba orchestra plays the jawbone of a horse with a stick. Or maybe it’s a donkey. Hard to tell the difference when it comes to jaws. We learned that the instrument is a quijada, it’s a donkey jaw, and it’s traditional in Mexico and Peru, though it originated in Africa, where zebras were the unlucky providers. We’d never seen an instrument like it, but next time we go to Mexico we’ll keep an eye out. Girl in 313, bones and all, premiered today in 1940.
