Crime Without Passion

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".)

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.

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