Crime sans passion

"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.

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 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.

This is an unusual and surreal little film, starting from the beginning. The prologue says that the three furies go about the world enticing people to do evil. Then a shadowed figure of a man shoots a woman in cold blood and out of the droplets of the blood come the three furies, looking and laughing like female demons racing into the night.

Then we are in criminal attorney Lee Gentry's (Claude Rains) office. He is mentioning to his legal secretary how he wants to get rid of his current girlfriend, Carmen Brown, a cabaret dancer (Margo), but that instead of that he wound up in a flurry of kisses and vows with her, once again. He wants to dump her for the ice queen, Katy, who does not seem nearly as enthused about him as he is about her. Basically Gentry delivers a monologue about how he just can't resist figuring out what makes the women in his life tick, getting them head over heels in love with him, and then their adoration repels him and causes him to reject them. You get the feeling that maybe Gentry has a 50ish legal secretary exactly because he does not want his bad personal romantic habits to follow him into the office.

In the next scenes Gentry gets everybody on his bad side, the prosecutor, the police, he even sets up a situation to make it look like he feels Carmen has been unfaithful and that is why he is leaving her, making her feel their breakup is her own fault. Up to now everything Gentry has done is because he thinks he is better than everybody else, smarter, that he can take what he wants and not care for other people's feelings. And then he performs one unselfish act and it turns into what could be construed as murder. The police and prosecutors are certainly not going to go easy on him or believe him after he has made fools of them in court on a regular basis. So he sets out to make it look like he could not have committed the murder. His legal mind constructs an intricate alibi, even setting up an alternate fall guy for the murder.

How does this all pan out? Watch and find out. The ending is like a cross between something Robert Serling and Alfred Hitchcock would come up with. Highly recommended. This practically one man show will hold your interest throughout partly due to Ben Hecht's talented writing and direction, and partly due to Rains' outstanding performance.

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.