Crimen sin pasión

"Fascinating...those insects...the so-called human race. They don't look like porch climbers, murderers and wife beaters from here. You wouldn't think those harmless-looking little doodlebugs were full of greed and lust and all the seven deadly sins. I often wonder why people go on living...intelligent people, I mean. - Lee Gentry's (Claude Rains) first lines, spoken while gazing out of his office window

A character study of Nietzschean proportions of a lawyer whose only moral is intelligence and whose only real desire is to be loved. Lee Gentry made it his specialty to defend the worst criminals and to win those cases. Even though he is the protagonist the film dares to show him as the (in)human scum that lawyers are and while there isn't exactly ANYTHING likable about him he is admirable in some ways and above all he is a tragic figure as a case study of conflicting concepts in their purest form. It's the dramatic battle of a supreme analytical mind unclouded by morality against a very human (and very male) desire. On that basis I could very much relate to him as a more extreme reflection of myself. The tragedy is that Lee Gentry is self-aware about this inner conflict and he tries to find a practical way to make them work in union but we already know that he will get his comeuppance because the opening sets it up that way, "the Furies - the three sisters of Evil" are sure to get him sooner or later, the question is how. In this sense it's a bit of a precursor of film noir, hardly surprising coming from Ben Hecht.

Independently produced, directed and written by Ben Hecht together with his regular writing partner Charles MacArthur both of which are best known as writers of plays and Hollywood screenplays. IMDb also gives directing credit to cinematographer Lee Garmes ('Shanghai Express' and other von Sternbergs, Scarface,...) which probably hints at him being an important collaborator since Hecht and MacArthur were new to this whole directing thing. Furthermore he also did a very fine job photographing the picture, especially for an early talky it has some exquisite camera-work. It also has some bold editing rhythms. Overall the filmmaking by those first-time directors is stunningly self-assured and sophisticated and probably less surprising is that the film in the best sense doesn't exactly feel like it goes by the book. And perhaps inevitably for an early sound film there is a certain rawness to it that only made the whole endeavor more exciting for me.

The amazing surreal opening montage by Slavko Vorkapich which alone is for me up there with the most impressive experimental films of its time is just a great warm-up to one outstanding movie. It's been a while since I saw a film that got a physical reaction out of me and I sure am glad that I didn't listen to the naysayers who claimed that it is little more than a great montage sandwiching a fairly standard film, 'Crime Without Passion' reigniting my passion for cinema.

If you like films about amoral protagonists who think they stand above everyone else (Crime and Punishment, American Psycho,...) or if you feverishly rooted for Edward G. Robinson to get away with his crime in 'The Woman in the Window' (you'll see why I made that comparison) or if you enjoyed the raw energy of 'Baby Face' but also understood why the seemingly ruthless career climber would go for marriage in the end then 'Crime Without Passion' comes highly recommended.

Offbeat crime yarn features one of the most impressive title sequences of any 1930s film, some innovative editing and fast cutting, a magnetic Claude Rains as the antihero-hero, and the unique Margo (then aged 17, but looking more like 27) with her unusual voice. In its style and presentation, it anticipates films made in later decades. *** out of 4.

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".)

One of the first indie features. Made by writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (Of "The Front Page""Twentieth Century" fame at the Paramount Astoria Studios outside of NYC. (Rumor has it the filmmakers had poster a sign- "Screw Adoplh Zukor" on the studio door. Zukor was then head of Paramount!) Film begins with a wild montage of near nude furies soaring over Manhattan and attacking various sinners. It's a scene that will floor you, and keep you glued to the screen! Then we go to the center of the story, attorney Lee Gentry (a superb Claude Rains), a womanizing, authority hating egomaniac. During an argument with his mistress, singer Carman Brown (Margo) Gentry accidentally fires a gun at Carman. Thinking her dead, he builds up an alibi. Torn by the fear that he might get caught by a legal system he belittles, he goes deeper into insanity and crime. I won't say what happens, but those furies get the last laugh. Obviously a small budget was used here, but this is fantastic film-making. Don't miss!

This is simply directed by a duo of writers who financed themselves. Hecht was a new introduction for me but looking through his resume I realize I've seen several of his work (who hasn't?). He could really write, and this beats any of Hitchcock's stuff until Notorious which they wrote together.

This is a small film but wickedly clever, all about illusion and ego; indeed if you decide to track it down it must be for the weaving of these two notions.

We have a snooty intellectual, a lawyer, who looks down from his window on the dumb riffraff on the street that he now and then defends in court for amusement, for merely the intellectual challenge of outwitting the law. Justice doesn't play a part. It's all a big show; we see him early in court marvelously perform in front of a grand jury, acquitting a killer.

The film essentially begins when he accidentally kills a scorned girlfriend, setting off the divine farce where he will have to face a higher law. Anticipating the case, our fool walks around setting alibis, doctoring clues, constructing the story he will present to an audience. Leaving her building, he feels that he may be watched from every window. Paranoia creeps in. We watch all this unfold in real time.

This isn't some abstract notion at play, and what separates the truly great films is that they can take it up in its full significance. Namely, that we all carry this intellectual mind constantly trying to plan stories ahead of us, master the narrative. That most of the time we put it to destructive use and only obscure the true world where those things are one.

You'll notice in the film that for all its mechanical cleverness his constructed story is ultimately proved false; the world itself outwits him. That it creates for him so much useless drama and anxiety out of nothing. And that had he been simply honest, to himself first, he would have been with the woman he loves.

Of course it all happens so this intellectual who thinks himself better, above others and law, will find himself down here in the world of human passions, punished by the gods of noir.

What struck me the most however was the following bit. As he begins to plot his escape story, a hovering ghost self (his 'legal mind') appears next to him, dictating the story. It isn't cinematic to see because it creates an easy duality: real and not real, madness and sanity on clean sides.. But it is that illusory self separated from the world, and in the separation it plainly shows the human left behind, lapsing into hallucination.

Cornerstones of noir, and we have them here so clearly: hovering mind, fates and hallucination.

When noir proper would roll around this hovering mind attempting manipulation becomes the elusive fabric of noir world, leaving behind the schmuck to lapse into hallucination. The scene near the end here where the girlfriend appears to him may as well be hallucinated.

Noir Meter: 3/4