Crime Without Passion
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''Crime Without Passion'' is a 1934 American
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
directed by Ben Hecht and
Charles MacArthur Charles Gordon MacArthur (November 5, 1895 – April 21, 1956) was an American playwright, screenwriter and 1935 winner of the Academy Award for Best Story. Life and career MacArthur was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the sixth of seven chil ...
and starring Claude Rains. It is the first of four pictures written, produced and directed by Hecht and MacArthur for Paramount Pictures. Sixty to seventy percent of the film was directed by cinematographer
Lee Garmes Lee Garmes, A.S.C. (May 27, 1898 – August 31, 1978) was an American cinematographer. During his career, he worked with directors Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Nicholas Ray and Henry Hathaway, whom ...
.


Plot

The plot centers around a clever and suave but unscrupulous and dishonest lawyer Lee Gentry (Rains) who boasts that he "lives by lies". His attempts to finish his affair with a clinging, besotted cabaret artist do not go according to plan.


Cast


Critical reception

In ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'',
Mordaunt Hall Mordaunt Hall (1 November 1878 – 2 July 1973) was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for ''The New York Times'', working from October 1924 to September 1934.


Bibliography

* Eames, John Douglas, ''The Paramount Story'',
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
: Octopus Books, 1985


References


External links

* *
"''Crime without Passion'' (1934). Three stars." Review and film synopsis
at wordpress.com
The Furies
" opening
montage sequence Montage (, ''mon-TAHJ'') is a film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. In French, the word "montage" applied to cinema simply de ...
of ''Crime Without Passion'', special effects by
Slavko Vorkapich Slavoljub "Slavko" Vorkapić ( sr-Cyrl, Славољуб "Славко" Воркапић; March 17, 1894 – October 20, 1976), known in English as Slavko Vorkapich, was a Serbian-born Hollywood montagist, an independent cinematic artist, chair ...
1934 films 1934 crime drama films American black-and-white films 1930s English-language films Paramount Pictures films American crime drama films Films with screenplays by Ben Hecht Films with screenplays by Charles MacArthur Films directed by Ben Hecht 1930s American films {{1930s-crime-drama-film-stub