Crime Without Passion


Crime Without Passion is a 1934 American drama film directed by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, 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.
The plot centers around a clever and suave but unscrupulous and dishonest lawyer, Lee Gentry 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

In The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall found "a drama blessed with marked originality and photographed with consummate artistry," and cited one of its many pluses as "that of having Claude Rains in the main rôle."