Hi, oweno and guys,
I never saw a .35 S&W with a pointed bullet; you might be thinking of the old 9mm Parabellum (Luger) with the truncated cone bullet. The .35 S&W does not look like a .32ACP as much as like a .380 on Slim Fast.
The .35 was made for a while with a bullet that had grease in it; when fired, the grease was pushed out through holes at the side of the bullet and lubricated the barrel. Also, the original bullets were made with lead sides and a cupronickel tip; S&W was concerned about jacketed bullets giving excessive wear, but lead bullets would not feed. Great ideas in theory, but expensive nonsense in reality.
Since Colt had the Browning patents sewed up (among them was the slide concept in a blowback pistol), S&W bought the Belgian Clement patents. The Clement featured a very light breechblock and had been made only in 5.5 Clement and 6.35. S&W wanted something more powerful but had a devil of a time getting the thing to work with the light breechblock. They finally used a doozy of a recoil spring, one so powerful that it was almost impossible to operate the breechblock by hand. So they added a disconnector so that the breechblock could be operated for loading the first round. But with the spring disconnected, the block has to be pulled back and pushed forward.
The safety system is also interesting. There are two safeties, a grip safety at the front of the grip and a "wheel"-like safety at the back. The latter can (in theory) be "rolled off" with the web of the thumb. All in all, an awkward system. Sometimes the genius of a designer is shown by how far out competitors have to go to work around his patents.
I do not think I would have liked to have been a designer at S&W in that period with the bosses on your fanny to make their stupid mistake work, somehow!
Note that there are still remnants of the Clement design in modern S&W .22 pistols, including the Model 41. They seem to have wanted to keep that "S&W look".
Jim