Crime Without Passion (1934)

An arresting curio from the fabled writing team of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, it's one of their two efforts at co-direction. Although partly based on the celebrated career of New York defense attorney William Fallon, the film reflects Hecht's abiding fascination with the ideas of Nietzsche, of which it's a somewhat melodramatic caricature. A lawyer of extraordinary skill, Lee Gentry (Claude Rains) thinks of himself as a kind of overman, easily capable of committing murder with impunity. While the high-flown dialogue can be pretentious, and Rains' performance is often stagey, this is a skillfully executed melodrama, filled with baroque visual devices then considered avant-garde. One of these is the film's framing montage of the three classical Furies flying through New York in search of their next victim. Hollywoodized as beautiful women in diaphanous gowns, they seem to suggest what the filmmakers believed truly had the power to drive men mad. Credited as associate director, Lee Garmes was given a free hand in shaping the film's look, and the fluid expressionism of his photography is one of its glories. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide