Journal of a Crime

I was watching this film for the first time today and I could swear I saw the bank robber shoot the actress. I was therefore befuddled when the wife admitted the murder to her husband. Am I crazy? Why did she confess?

Other than for this confusion, I thought the film well acted. Adolphe Menjou is always worth watching - as suave a gentleman as you'll find anywhere. Ruth Chatterton was also admirable, if soft-pedalled most of the time.

Like another commentator, I, too, was pleasantly surprised by the thwarting of the always-annoying Hays Office. I can only guess that Francoise's saving of the child's life near the end was sufficient evidence of goodness to placate the prissy Mr. Hays.

Journal Of A Crime finds Ruth Chatterton and Adolphe Menjou at the end of their marriage. The film opens with Chatterton out spying on Menjou and his new mistress Claire Dodd. She hears Dodd finally order Menjou to make a choice and he reluctantly does because I suspect the dog wants to keep things as they are and have it both ways.

When he comes home Menjou does finally tell Chatterton it's over, but that drives her to a homicidal rage. She does shoot Dodd, but has a stroke of luck in that Noel Madison, a bank robber who had shot and killed a teller during a robbery took refuge in the same theater location and gets arrested. She gets away with it except that Menjou finds evidence to arrest his wife. He hides it, preferring to let Chatterton work it out for herself, one way or another.

The title comes from the fact that Chatterton as a kind of self therapy starts keeping a journal of her conscience. She's not a hardened criminal, just a woman who was done wrong. The film is totally dominated by her performance.

Though Journal Of A Crime is excessively melodramatic, it does give Ruth Chatterton a really good role where her facial expressions like in a silent film contain more than pages of dialog. In the end fate has an interesting ending for her and Menjou for that matter.

A remake of a French film made the previous year, Raymond Rouleau's 'Une Vie Perdue' (1933), Ruth Chatterton's final film under her Warner Bros. contract begins like an intense marital drama; although the title has already lead the viewer to anticipate a 'crime passionnel' and start wondering who's going to get shot. Surely not husband Adolphe Menjou? He's a big star and has second billing. Maybe third billed Claire Dodd, cast to type as the charmless Other Woman nagging Menjou to get a divorce...

• BANG! -

Then the crime takes place, and by amazing coincidence a bank robber just happens to be hanging around backstage to take the fall for the real culprit. The coincidences now start piling on faster and faster, crammed into an incredible 64 minutes whose tortuous twists and turns are probably the result of the writing being on the wall about the new Production Code just months away. The code wasn't in force yet, so both adultery and murder go unpunished; but the narrative that follows twists itself into greater and greater contortions in seeming anticipation of Joseph Breen's coming blue pencil.

A case of first degree murder is handled different than most in this code enforced era film that tries to find a loophole around it by way of a most understanding husband along with a deus ex machina or two to right things. Journal of a Crime may be an implausible read but it does allow an almost comatose Ruth Chatterton as the culprit to have some powerful emotional moments in the face of some overwhelming odds.

Francoise Mollet (Chatterton) gets wind her husband, Paul (Adolph Menjou) is having a serious dalliance with a stage actress that threatens her marriage. When she fails to reverse his course she heads to the theatre and blows the thespian mid rehearsal away. By the oddest coincidence though a bank robber who has just murdered a teller takes refuge at the playhouse is captured and charged with her murder as well. Paul knows better however and decides to let his "fiend" wife stew in her own juices before confessing.

The preposterous scenario is too far fetched to give Journal of a Crime a passing grade but Ms. Chatterton is every bit as effective as she was in the classic Dodsworth living out the same self absorbed, petty existence of delusion and humiliation but with more dire consequence. Menjou displays some interesting restraint as Paul who in his own way and with less explanation does some unorthodox enabling that not only keeps Ruth from being fried but also buys enough time to have another misfortune benefit her. The turn of events that may save Francoise however only builds the case against the incredulous plot that dooms this film.

"Moliet" (Adolphe Menjou) is under pressure from his mistress "Odette" (Claire Dodd) to end his marriage and come live with her. He is reluctant, but his hand is forced when his wife (Ruth Chatterton) overhears a bit of conversation that causes her to preempt things by shooting her rival - conveniently, as it happens, as hoodlum "Costelli" is nearby, apprehended and convicted of the crime. Thing is, "Moliet" knows who really killed his lover and she knows he knows, so their home life becomes something quite attritional with "Francoise" determined to keep her man at all costs and he equally determined, though rather benignly, that she will come to terms with the ramifications of her actions and, he hopes, do the right thing. Will she, though? The film here isn't really anything more than a standard revenge drama, but Chatterton's role offers her a chance to play the increasingly troubled character with some deft. Her gradual realisation of the impact of her actions - on her, her husband and even on the man who will take the rap, gradually makes her ill and lifeless and she performs this latter part of the role so as to encourage us to feel almost sympathetic for her. Menjou does fine as a conduit for his co-star to shine here and though the denouement is a bit of a let down, it's still worth a watch to remember that Ruth Chatterton's move into sound pictures was a great deal smoother than many.