Jewel Robbery (1932)

Jewel Robbery is the kind of pre-Code delight that feels like champagne with a wicked grin: sophisticated, airy, and just daring enough to make you wonder how Hollywood ever got away with it. William Powell glides through the film with effortless charm as a gentleman thief, and Kay Francis meets him beat for beat with a cool, amused elegance that turns flirtation into a high-wire act of wit. The tone is light but deliciously amoral, more interested in sparkle, banter, and the thrill of a daylight caper than in moral lectures, and that’s precisely its magic. If you like your romance with a side of crime and your comedy served with grown-up sophistication, this is pure, entertaining fun—though anyone craving realism or stern consequences may find it too breezy by design.

Jewel Robbery is clearly aiming for that pre-Code cocktail of sophisticated flirtation, light crime, and playful moral looseness, with a gentleman thief and a bored society wife sparring their way through Vienna. When it works, the charm is real: the leads have polish, the premise is breezy, and the daylight heist has a fun, theatrical snap. But if you’re expecting the razor-sharp elegance of Lubitsch-style capers, this can feel like a chatty imitation—more banter than momentum—and it occasionally tips into silliness instead of wit. Also, the film’s casual attitude toward fidelity and ethics is very much the point, so if you want your romances cleaner or your criminals properly punished, you’ll likely find it more annoying than delightful.