Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This Claude Rains film is worth seeing simply because it is so ultra-bizarre, with the strangest opening sequence I've ever seen. It looks as if the film was written and directed by Salvador Dali at some points, not Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur!! You really have to see it to believe it and I couldn't do it justice trying to describe it further.Rains plays Lee Gentry, a hot-shot lawyer who seems to be able to get guilty clients off for crimes with ease. Naturally the cops and prosecutors hate him but what can they do? Well, they can let Gentry destroy himself...which he does when he shoots a girlfriend in a fit of jealousy! What's next? Well, see for yourself.The style is much better than the story itself and lovers of the strange MUST see this one! Clever and very original even if the story itself seems pretty weird.

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.

"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 windowA 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.

Critics and public alike were dazzled by "Crime Without Passion" written, produced and directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who had collaborated on many plays over the years. Having the Paramount Astoria, New York studio almost to themselves, photographer Lee Garmes and special effects director Slavko Vorkapich created many striking technical innovations often copied over the years.For the small percentage of the public who happened to see this independently made film - the astonishing first few moments would have shocked them out of their seats. Near naked furies rise from a murdered woman's blood and with breaking glass and maniacal laughter show the sordidness of tawdry affairs. Lee Gentry (Claude Rains) is a brilliant but cynical attorney who claims there would be no-one in prison if there were more attorneys like him to defend them. In his private life he is not so brilliant as he is completely besotted with icy but socially prominent Katie (Whitney Bourne) and far above (in his opinion) Carmen Brown (Margo), his current inamorata, who is clingy but passionate and loving.Lee thinks he knows all the angles involving criminal law which comes in handy when he accidentally kills Carmen - or does he??? Goaded on by his alter ego the all too human Lee, while setting up a certain Mr. White (Stanley Ridges, who was also excellent in "Black Friday" (1940)) to take a fall, accidentally drops a telegram on his way to Carmen's apartment, then bumps into a woman he wishes to avoid in the middle of setting up his alibi.All too soon it is over, as dazzling as it began. Claude Rains, seen for the first time by movie goes (he was only heard in "The Invisible Man") scored brilliantly in the lead and Margo, in her screen debut was appropriately warm and passionate as Carmen.