User Reviews

When one says the name Ruth Chatterton, one is evoking a very early period in films. Chatterton was a noted stage actress and she demonstrated a wonderful flair in films. She was kind of the Kay Francis of the very early '30s, though Francis was working by then. Chatterton had about 12 years on her so was on her way out.

In this film, she's married to Adolph Menjou. Menjou is in love with the ingénue lead in his play. She's playing for keeps and warns her lover if he doesn't get a divorce, they're through. Chatterton overhears this and kills her during a rehearsal. Her husband knows about it, but another man, a bank robber, is arrested. She refuses to go to the police.

It's actually a psychological drama, with Menjou predicting she will destroy herself because of guilt. She does start to sink downhill.

Some say this was a weak ending, and I suppose it was, but it is an interesting one, if contrived. I kind of liked it.

I think it's worth seeing some of these very early stars, and I especially enjoy Ruth Chatterton's performances.

Apparently a remake of the french "Un Vie Perdue" ( A Life Lost), at the heart of this one is Paul (Adolphe Menjou), who is married to Francoise (Ruth Chatterton). He has a "thing" with his co-worker Odette (Claire Dodd)... but she wants Paul to choose between herself and the wife. Suddenly, a shot rings out and someone is kaput! Whodunnit? Menjou is the usual quiet, calm, sophisticated guy he always plays. It's even more interesting timing, the making of this version, since 1934 was ALSO the year that they began really enforcing the film production code, with the strict rules of conduct and conversation. I'll not ruin any surprises, so when the viewer has watched it for themselves, he or she can decide if this was made following the stricter Hays rules. The setup for the story is done in the first third of the film, and after that, we watch as events unfold, based on what happened at the very beginning. This was one of the first films directed by William Keighley, and he did a fine job. Shown on Turner Classics now and then. Entertaining enough. Nothing too serious.

Journal Of A Crime finds Ruth Chatterton and Adolphe Menjou at the end of their marriage. The film opens with Chatterton out spying on Menjou and his new mistress Claire Dodd. She hears Dodd finally order Menjou to make a choice and he reluctantly does because I suspect the dog wants to keep things as they are and have it both ways.

When he comes home Menjou does finally tell Chatterton it's over, but that drives her to a homicidal rage. She does shoot Dodd, but has a stroke of luck in that Noel Madison, a bank robber who had shot and killed a teller during a robbery took refuge in the same theater location and gets arrested. She gets away with it except that Menjou finds evidence to arrest his wife. He hides it, preferring to let Chatterton work it out for herself, one way or another.

The title comes from the fact that Chatterton as a kind of self therapy starts keeping a journal of her conscience. She's not a hardened criminal, just a woman who was done wrong. The film is totally dominated by her performance.

Though Journal Of A Crime is excessively melodramatic, it does give Ruth Chatterton a really good role where her facial expressions like in a silent film contain more than pages of dialog. In the end fate has an interesting ending for her and Menjou for that matter.

I was watching this film for the first time today and I could swear I saw the bank robber shoot the actress. I was therefore befuddled when the wife admitted the murder to her husband. Am I crazy? Why did she confess?

Other than for this confusion, I thought the film well acted. Adolphe Menjou is always worth watching - as suave a gentleman as you'll find anywhere. Ruth Chatterton was also admirable, if soft-pedalled most of the time.

Like another commentator, I, too, was pleasantly surprised by the thwarting of the always-annoying Hays Office. I can only guess that Francoise's saving of the child's life near the end was sufficient evidence of goodness to placate the prissy Mr. Hays.

JOURNAL OF A CRIME (First National Pictures, 1934) directed by William Keighley, stars Ruth Chatterton in her sixth and final film for the studio in a melodramatic tale of a long suffering wife. While this material, from the play by Jacques Bevan, could have gone to Kay Francis, another studio resident of stories such as this, Ruth Chatterton does what she can to make her character believable during the plot's 64 minute briefing.

The story opens in Paris (where nobody speaks with a French accent) during the late evening hours where Francoise (Ruth Chatterton) is seen outside the theater where her playwright husband Paul (Adolphe Menjou) and its director, Chautard (George Barbier) are inside rehearsing a musical play titled "Adecia." Once outside, she spots and overhears Paul conversing with Odette Floret (Claire Dodd), its leading lady who happens to be her husband's mistress, discussing for Paul to divorce his wife and marry her or else their affair is over. Unable to hurt his wife, Paul, who is desperately in love with Odette, makes his promise to her. Arriving home at 3 a.m., Paul finds Francoise awaiting him, but is unable to break the news to her. The next day, during rehearsals, Paul informs Odette he couldn't tell his wife, but promises to do so that very night. At the same time, Costelli (Noel Madison) 13 blocks away from the theater, robs the bank, killing its bank clerk. With the police in hot pursuit, Costelli abandons his car and hides inside the theater mixing with the crowd in rehearsal. Inside the auditorium, a gunshot is heard, killing Odette on stage, causing a search and capture of Costelli put under arrest. Paul discovers his own gun inside a bucket of water and immediately believes his wife responsible. Refusing to admit her crime of passion to the police, with Francoise wanting to hold on to her husband, Paul remains with his wife, awaiting for the day she confesses to the police, secrets written privately through her day by day accounts in her journal of a crime. Co-starring Douglass Dumbrille, Philip Reed, Henry O'Neill, Henry Kolker, Jane Darwell and twelfth billed, Walter Pidgeon.

What attracted me to JOURNAL OF A CRIME initially was the 12th billed Walter Pidgeon, a former leading actor in late silent and early talkies (1928-1931) who would achieve major stardom in the 1940s. Aside from he briefly seen singing during the rehearsal sequences involving Claire Dodd, he is given no camera close-ups nor major scenes. Another thing that attracted me to this production is Ruth Chatterton. With a handful of movie roles for Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dating back to 1928, the only movie of hers to be repeatedly televised since the 1960s was her iconic role in DODSWORTH (Samuel Goldwyn, 1936) starring Walter Huston. Thanks for cable channel as Turner Classic Movies are the Chatterton/Warner Brothers dramas (1932-1934) revived and rediscovered again. Beautiful Claire Dodd, typically cast as the other woman, is no different here than her other movies of this era. She's a fine actress rarely given a chance to act against type. Adolphe Menjou is satisfactory, as always, playing the grief-stricken husband.

The premise of JOURNAL OF A CRIME is a reminder of W. Somerset Maugham's play and motion picture retelling of "The Letter" in which wife murders her lover, in this instance, her husband's lover, and how the wife must suffer for her sins of her crime. And how Chatterton suffers. Also available on DVD to see how the movie finishes. (**1.2)

Looking at "Journal of a Crime," there is not much there, a short movie with too may gauzy shots of Chatterton attempting to look younger then she was. The contrast between this movie and "Female" is night and day. The fact that in this movie crime is not punished, a criminal seeming to get away with it, was not that unusual before July 1, 1934, when the Breen office started strict enforcement of the Production Code. Check out "Upperworld," another Warner movie released in early 1934 (and showing on TCM in September 2005). "Journal of a Crime" had a release date in March 1934. Chatterton was an above the title star, whose name was enough to bring in customers. Aside from her salary, Warner Bros. did not put much money in Chatterton's last starring role. Jack Warner probably made sure this movie was finished in 3 weeks within its meager budget. Chatterton's movie career was effectively buried until Turner started to release Pre-Code movies, first on the Forbidden Hollywood series of movies (which included "Female") and then on TCM.

By the time Warner Bros. released "Journal of a Crime," Ruth Chatterton was history on the Warners lot, her contract not renewed in February 1934, along with another troublesome actor, Richard Barthelmess. Both had protested the major studios' plan to reduce salaries for talent across the board in 1933, and both paid the price. Ruth Chatterton was earning over $375,000 a year when Warners let her go, the ostensible reason being that she hadn't had a hit since Frisco Jenny. Chatterton's husband at the time, George Brent, still under Warner's contract, then refused an assignment to work as co-star in 'Mandalay" and was put on indefinite suspension while the lawyers hashed things out. Although Chatterton appeared in a few more movies for other studios after her departure from Warners, her film career was pretty much over after this movie. For that matter, First National Pictures, which was a separate production unit at Warners, was merged into Warner Bros. in 1934. First National's production supervisor, Hal Wallis, had taken over Darryl Zanuck's job when Zanuck left Warner Bros. to protest the unfairness of cutting in half the pay of many studio employees in 1933 while top management kept their salaries in full. Warners was a studio with a mission to cut expenses, requiring movies to be made in 18 days (3 weeks, in the 6 long day movie studio work week, until overtime laws covered Hollywood craft workers in 1939) and trying to keep down the salaries of acting talent. Chatterton cost too much, her contract was up and she was out in the new, penny pinching Hollywood.

A remake of a French film made the previous year, Raymond Rouleau's 'Une Vie Perdue' (1933), Ruth Chatterton's final film under her Warner Bros. contract begins like an intense marital drama; although the title has already lead the viewer to anticipate a 'crime passionnel' and start wondering who's going to get shot. Surely not husband Adolphe Menjou? He's a big star and has second billing. Maybe third billed Claire Dodd, cast to type as the charmless Other Woman nagging Menjou to get a divorce...

• BANG! -

Then the crime takes place, and by amazing coincidence a bank robber just happens to be hanging around backstage to take the fall for the real culprit. The coincidences now start piling on faster and faster, crammed into an incredible 64 minutes whose tortuous twists and turns are probably the result of the writing being on the wall about the new Production Code just months away. The code wasn't in force yet, so both adultery and murder go unpunished; but the narrative that follows twists itself into greater and greater contortions in seeming anticipation of Joseph Breen's coming blue pencil.

Journal of a Crime (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent melodrama from Warner has Ruth Chatterton playing a wife who finds out that her husband (Adolphe Menjou) is in love with another woman (Claire Dodd). Fearing that she's going to lose him forever, the wife shoots the lover and gets away with it but when the husband finds out he decides not to tell anyone because he feels the best justice is for his wife to slowly crack under the guilt. This pre-Code isn't the greatest film ever made and there are quite a few problems with the story but the performance of Chatterton makes it worth sitting through if you enjoy this period of Hollywood. I think the best thing going for the film is the performance of Chatterton who is quite believable as the grieving wife. The screenplay goes all over the place with her character so Chatterton has to go through a wide range of emotions. She nails everyone of them and especially the scenes early on when she learns that her husband no longer loves her and she does what she can to try and save her marriage. This good sequence is followed by her slowly turning to rage when she realizes that it really doesn't matter what she does as the husband has his heart made up. Chatterton has always been an underrated actress and her performance here proves she could handle just about anything. Menjou is always good and that continues here as he could play this type of role in his sleep. I especially loved the way he remains calm, cool and collective while trying to force the guilt trip on the wife. Dodd doesn't appear in the film for too long but she's good while there. The screenplay is the main villain here because it's never quite clear where the picture wants to go and while I won't ruin the ending I will say it's incredibly stupid as it really doesn't close anything up. Yes, it closes the "past" up but everything with the husband and his feelings are pretty much untouched. At just 64-minutes the film moves well enough and is okay for a one-time viewing.

In Paris, jealous Francoise (Ruth Chatterton) is spying on her playwright husband Paul Mollet (Adolphe Menjou) and his mistress Odette Florey (Claire Dodd), the star of his play. Francoise is desperate to keep him from divorcing her. Odette is shot dead during rehearsal. A man is arrested but he claims to be innocent.

I like the premise at first but I don't like the ending. There are also little issues here and there. This has some good potential for a psychological thriller or a character study. In the end, it achieves neither. The interesting premise fades away and the ending lets the movie off the hook. It's trying to be poetic in some sense but there is a major thread left hanging. It's sadly not enough.

Considering how simple of a tale this is film wise of course makes the almost inconceivable amount of loopholes and meandering questions left as it ends appear far more ludicrous then the overused plot itself.

As it all begins we see a scorned Mrs finding out about her philandering producer husband and his snotty performer mistress. realizing he wants a divorce the wife sometime later goes to the theater and murders his lover mid rehearsal but it's a bank robber who hid in the place that gets blamed for it. The Mr knows better then the law though and he informs her of his plan - to let her stew in the massive guilt she's feeling until she won't be able to take it anymore.

His "master-plan" goes smoothly until the most downright impossible, implacable, mind boggling event occurs and it's laughably bad.

Credit where credit is due Ruth Chatterton (the wife) does manage to pull one impressive performance of a confused desperate soul but alas thanks to the rather appalling manner both main characters are handled in this screenplay I couldn't for the life of me root for either of them not to mention both. If only it was all from Adolphe Menjou's (the husband's) point of view that way at least one could have felt sorry for them making each other miserable and his odd actions would make more sense had we got to see some form of reasoning behind them instead as an audience we're kept at arm's length from what truly goes on.

A case of first degree murder is handled different than most in this code enforced era film that tries to find a loophole around it by way of a most understanding husband along with a deus ex machina or two to right things. Journal of a Crime may be an implausible read but it does allow an almost comatose Ruth Chatterton as the culprit to have some powerful emotional moments in the face of some overwhelming odds.

Francoise Mollet (Chatterton) gets wind her husband, Paul (Adolph Menjou) is having a serious dalliance with a stage actress that threatens her marriage. When she fails to reverse his course she heads to the theatre and blows the thespian mid rehearsal away. By the oddest coincidence though a bank robber who has just murdered a teller takes refuge at the playhouse is captured and charged with her murder as well. Paul knows better however and decides to let his "fiend" wife stew in her own juices before confessing.

The preposterous scenario is too far fetched to give Journal of a Crime a passing grade but Ms. Chatterton is every bit as effective as she was in the classic Dodsworth living out the same self absorbed, petty existence of delusion and humiliation but with more dire consequence. Menjou displays some interesting restraint as Paul who in his own way and with less explanation does some unorthodox enabling that not only keeps Ruth from being fried but also buys enough time to have another misfortune benefit her. The turn of events that may save Francoise however only builds the case against the incredulous plot that dooms this film.