Steve D
The film is ok but Rains knocks it out of the park.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/03/24
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Audience Member
Claude Rains is a slimy defense attorney known for his ability to get seemingly guilty clients off with outrageous tactics. He's dating nightclub performer Margo, who he wants to dump for his socialite girlfriend Whitney Bourne, who he truly loves. He sets up a meeting between Margo and her ex Stanley Ridges, and then uses it to accuse her on unfaithfulness. She confronts him, and he accidentally kills her. He uses his legal talents, manifested by a ghostly image of himself who he converses with, to construct an elaborate alibi for himself. This film was the directorial debut of writing team Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, although cinematographer Lee Garmes claimed he did most of the practical work of directing it. That's a plausible story since this is an a visually complex flick that opens with a really bravura sequence depicting the furies causing people to murder and suffer the consequences. Rains seems to really enjoy playing an unrepentant slime ball.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
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Audience Member
good post-code suspenser starring the fab Margo
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
Crime Without Passion is almost an existential film about a famous, cocky attorney who suspects his mistress is seeing other men. When he confronts her, he accidentally shoots her. Using his knowledge of criminal justice, he attempt to cover up all the evidence which could lead to his arrest. This film features one of the most amazing opening sequences ever, which uses all sorts of visual camera tricks which are really quite revolutionary, especially for the time. The film never really quite lives up to the beginning but it is still a strong film. As our attorney tries to cover up his crime and get an alibi, the viewer is subjected to his internal dialogue, which tells him what to do. The film is very experimental and unique give that is was made back in 1934. As one would suspect, the script is really fantastic and Claude Rains is very fun to watch as the uber-succesful, philosophical attorney.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/17/23
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Audience Member
This film stands apart from most other old movies, because the screenplay, written by Ben Hecht, intends not to entertain, but to instruct (though it lacks the hokey didacticism of Back Door to Heaven). The hero is Lee Gentry, a standard Hechtian (or Randian, if you're unfamiliar with Hechtâthe approximation is close enough) übermensch, a misanthropic, calculating criminal defense lawyer with little respect for anything but the power of his own mind.
He no longer cares for Carmen, a cabaret singer he's dated for two years (having stolen her from his once friend, Eddie White), and he's moved onto a sturdy blonde, but he can't seem to break it off with Carmenâshe is too melodramatic and he hasn't the heart. But his blonde demands it, and so he crafts a scheme, to "catch" her cheating on him with Eddie White (though she did nothing of the sort) and thereby grant himself the right to break it off.
This plan works, until he gets a raving telegram from Carmen, in which she threatens suicide. At her house, he and she fight over a pistol, and he accidentally shoots herâshe falls down dead. The phone rings. An apparition of his ego appears, and instructs him; answer the phone, but mask your voice. Pocket the gun; pick up your crumpled boutonniere; go to the theater to create an alibi. Gentry seems to have structured things perfectly, but, in a Dostoevskyan twist, he is wracked with guilt, and confesses to the blonde. Revolted, she leaves him.
Again, the apparition appears, explaining to Gentry that this is perfect; he can now go to Carmen's theater for her showâdemonstrating that he doesn't know she has been killed. But there, things don't go well. He runs into another showgirl who says she saw him at the theater when she was waiting for her new boyfriendâbut an hour later than the time Gentry insists it was (which is the time he was in Carmen's apartment). Worried, he decides to silence her with romance, madly promising her furs and jewels, if only she'll leave with him immediately.
Cut to the dressing room, where Carmen is lying down, but insisting she's well enough to go onâshe's not dead at all! Only had been in a faint all along. Back outside, while Gentry's hands are on the showgirl, her new boyfriend comes in; it's Eddie White, again. The two men scuffle and Carmen's gun, still tucked in Gentry's pocket, goes off. Eddie White is dead; Gentry is immediately arrestedâit's an open and shut case with one hundred live witnesses and a clear motive.
At the police station, Gentry, alone for a minute, receives another visit from the apparition; it tells him to kill himself immediately, rather than wait for the chair. Gentry puts the gun barrel in his mouth, but his hands shake; he can't do it. The police officer confiscates the weapon, and the film is over, with the certain implication of Gentry's death by electrocution.
Hecht was, for a time, my favorite author (the time that I was between 17-21 years old, wore black ball gowns and Victorian boots, and saw nothing wrong with Ayn Rand's conception of the world). There is still something about his self-punishing snootiness (like all his heroes, he was too intelligent for his society, too good for this earth, and therefore suffered suffered suffered) with which I still guiltily identify, something that I don't want to be but feel that I can't help being. It is the thing that made me ask to play Lady Macbeth in grade school Shakespeare productions, the thing that made me read Nietzsche in college. Like Hecht, I fight it, lest I end up like one of his sick characters.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/12/23
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