Murder Without Crime

source: Murder Without Crime

Murder Without Crime

This first film J. Lee Thompson directed was based on his stage play of the same name. If not prison dramas, most of Thompson's noir themed films of the fifties like The Yellow Balloon were built on the same premise of a gullible victim convinced by someone else that he had committed murder when the crime never really happened. There is a big surprise twist at the end, it's not very believable because the blackmailer drinks from a poisoned glass and can walk to his own room so that our protagonist will not have to be charged with any crime for his death. To believe this, evidence of where the poison was would also have to be moved to the blackmailer's flat. Thompson hams this talk opera up during the climax with extreme face closeups and hysterical laughing. A binge drinker himself, it's not exactly a surprise that he conceived this tall tale. An obnoxious narrator often explains points in the plot that don't need to be heard. A less syrupy ending would have helped, too.

MURDER WITHOUT CRIME is an interesting albeit low budget character drama from future Hollywood director J. Lee Thompson. It's obviously made on a tight budget with just four main characters, although when one of them is played by the delightfully slimy Dennis Price you know you're in for an interesting watch. It's a story of accidental murder and blackmail, fleshed out by the usual twists and tension. Derek Farr doesn't make for the most sympathetic of protagonists but an intense Price carries the attention. The crazed set decoration plays a big part too.

I wonder whether scriptwriters take it upon themselves to insert a narrator into a script or if a producer does this to bolster a weak script.It can work e.g. Murder My Sweet but invariably it does not.I don't think that anything could save this film from mediocrity.Mind you the script seems to have taken ideas from Rope and the director the tilted camera angles from that Third Man.One of the big problems of this film is that characters are continually jumping to the wrong conclusions.Dennis Price does his usual character of a down at heels blackmailed.However his appearance in this film is evidence of his declining career.Apart from the deficiencies of the plot,this film could have made a good radio play.The director would go on to bigger and better films.

Slow-moving and stagey, but interesting "B" movie with arresting camera-work by Bill McLeod, plus the baroque finery of Jon Ashton's inspired art direction. Lee-Thompson's screenplay has overtones of "Rope", and one could not wish for a more ironic climax. However, 97 minutes is a little too long to spend with only four characters – especially as two of them are absent for much of the time, allowing the film to develop as a rather self-indulgent duologue. The movie is also saddled with an ill-advised and utterly phoney Pete Smith narration. Nevertheless, it has many good moments – plus, as noted above, Ashton's inspired sets. It's mighty unusual to find Ashton working on a "B"-budget movie (even though its running time puts it right out of the "B" line-up), but this was his debut assignment as an art director.

The first part of the movie is handicapped by an excess of voice over ;they are all the more pointless since there are only four characters in a movie which often looks like filmed stage production. Obviously influenced by Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948) , Jack Lee Thompson (whose film was his debut) lacks his colleague's finesse and virtuosity ; but by the second half, the movie hits its stride ,and becomes a cat-and-mouse play. And he is helped by Dennis Price's outstanding performance,;the actor's face,often filmed in close shot ,reflects hatred,envy ,perversity ;unhappy , he really wants to prevent his fellow men from being happy themselves. Watch it for him!