Crime sans passion

1934's "Crime Without Passion" is a rarely seen independent written, produced, and directed by regular writing team Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur ("The Front Page"), which was followed by three more in a span of two years- "The Scoundrel," "Once in a Blue Moon," and "Soak the Rich" (Hecht directed three more without MacArthur, who never directed again). Shot on Long Island in May-June 1934, this was Claude Rains' first feature since the phenomenal success of his Hollywood debut "The Invisible Man," and the actual film debut of actress/dancer Margo, niece of Xavier Cugat, remembered as the wife of GREEN ACRES' Eddie Albert, and mother of Edward Lawrence Albert (who looked just like his beautiful mother). Top billed Rains excels as Lee Gentry, smug, self-satisfied defense attorney, cool under fire in the courtroom, dismissing his guilty clients as little more than insects, using women much the same way. On one hand is long suffering lover Carmen Brown (Margo), who simply cannot let go, while he has since fallen for Katy Costello, who would rather they part as friends (played by Whitney Bourne, also making her film debut, finishing with less than a dozen credits). The lustful Gentry schemes to rid himself of Carmen, first falsely accusing her of seeing an old flame (Stanley Ridges), then confronting her in her apartment (with a loaded gun). Things go badly as he unintentionally shoots her, then must build an alibi for himself, desperately trying to maintain his composure with his own neck in the hangman's noose. A welcome last gasp of pre-code paranoia, a fascinating study of a most unlikable lead character; Claude Rains continued his newfound stardom in "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head," "Mystery of Edwin Drood," and "The Clairvoyant." Surprise cameos from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur as reporters interviewing Gentry 10 minutes in, even more surprising cameos from their respective wives 48 minutes in, Fanny Brice and Helen Hayes, seen by the camera panning through a hotel lobby. Another feature debut is that of Paula Trueman, a ubiquitous presence playing elderly eccentrics in the 70s and 80s, looking very much like Fanny Brice's 'Baby Snooks' in her scene stealing role as Buster Malloy, Carmen's stage partner, who inadvertently aids the despised Gentry with his meticulously plotted alibi.

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".)

This is actually a movie about a lost soul. Claude Rains plays a successful lawyer with virtually no moral standards. He is despised by his peers and embarrasses the police, time and time again. Beyond that, he is a cruel womanizer. He uses women and throws them away. He has a thing for a dancer in a nightclub. She had a previous affair with a serious adversary of Rains. Rains sets up a situation where the young woman can't win, and eventually he cruelly drives her to despair. This is quirky. See the first and last scene with the furies. Amazing stuff for the 1030's. I got a great kick out of this film.

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