Crime Without Passion (1934)

This Claude Rains film is worth seeing simply because it is so ultra-bizarre, with the strangest opening sequence I've ever seen. It looks as if the film was written and directed by Salvador Dali at some points, not Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur!! You really have to see it to believe it and I couldn't do it justice trying to describe it further.Rains plays Lee Gentry, a hot-shot lawyer who seems to be able to get guilty clients off for crimes with ease. Naturally the cops and prosecutors hate him but what can they do? Well, they can let Gentry destroy himself...which he does when he shoots a girlfriend in a fit of jealousy! What's next? Well, see for yourself.The style is much better than the story itself and lovers of the strange MUST see this one! Clever and very original even if the story itself seems pretty weird.

Critics and public alike were dazzled by "Crime Without Passion" written, produced and directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who had collaborated on many plays over the years. Having the Paramount Astoria, New York studio almost to themselves, photographer Lee Garmes and special effects director Slavko Vorkapich created many striking technical innovations often copied over the years.For the small percentage of the public who happened to see this independently made film - the astonishing first few moments would have shocked them out of their seats. Near naked furies rise from a murdered woman's blood and with breaking glass and maniacal laughter show the sordidness of tawdry affairs. Lee Gentry (Claude Rains) is a brilliant but cynical attorney who claims there would be no-one in prison if there were more attorneys like him to defend them. In his private life he is not so brilliant as he is completely besotted with icy but socially prominent Katie (Whitney Bourne) and far above (in his opinion) Carmen Brown (Margo), his current inamorata, who is clingy but passionate and loving.Lee thinks he knows all the angles involving criminal law which comes in handy when he accidentally kills Carmen - or does he??? Goaded on by his alter ego the all too human Lee, while setting up a certain Mr. White (Stanley Ridges, who was also excellent in "Black Friday" (1940)) to take a fall, accidentally drops a telegram on his way to Carmen's apartment, then bumps into a woman he wishes to avoid in the middle of setting up his alibi.All too soon it is over, as dazzling as it began. Claude Rains, seen for the first time by movie goes (he was only heard in "The Invisible Man") scored brilliantly in the lead and Margo, in her screen debut was appropriately warm and passionate as Carmen.

This rarely seen film was the third one made by Claude Rains, and only his second talkie. It was made just after THE INVISIBLE MAN, which gave Rains one of moviedom's best introductory film roles. So CRIME WITHOUT PASSION was sort of hidden by it's predecessor. This is rather curious because it was an early independent film, and it's creators were Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (the authors of TWENTIETH CENTURY and THE FRONT PAGE; Mr. MacArthur was also the husband of Helen Hayes). This was the first of two independent films made by them, the other being THE SCOUNDREL, a film about an amoral publisher played by Noel Coward. Both are interesting movies, though neither are above better - than - average. Being relatively cheaply made, their defects are too glaring (special effects are quite modest and...well cheap!).If people remember CRIME WITHOUT PASSION it is because of an early scene where Rains' clever lawyer wins an acquittal by putting a grandfather clock on the stand (symbolically, of course - it doesn't begin speaking and answering questions). The acting is uneven. Rains is superb, but Margo was always a heavy breathing/heavy speaking actress. Probably, she was available from Broadway productions in nearby Manhattan (the film was shot in the Astoria Paramount Studios).The role of the crooked "mouthpiece" probably was based on William Fallon, the leading criminal attorney in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Fallon frequently won acquittals of notorious gangsters, crooked politicians, and criminals. He was not afraid of going beyond the law - even getting into bribing juries. But he was a gifted attorney when he concentrated on his job (unfortunately he was also a heavy drinker, which destroyed his career and shortened his life). Unlike Rains, however, Fallon never killed anybody.

Beginning with an incredible sequence of the furies, this film about a successful attorney who believes he is far superior to the rest of mankind is a tour de force for the amazing Claude Rains. Very much an early 30's film with those wonderful Freudian overtones. (Margo, the dancer who plays Rains' mistress, was married to Eddie Albert, "Green Acres" and is the mother of Edward Albert, "Butterflies are Free".)