REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY. Paramount, 1933; Jean Hersholt, Wynne Gibson, Stuart Erwin, Frances Dee, Gordon Westcott, Robert Elliott, David Landau, William Janney. Screenplay adapted by Florence Ryerson from the play The Grootman Case by Walter Maria Espe Director: William Beaudine. Shown at Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY Jean Hersholt

   Jean Hersholt, a well-known “alienist,” comes to the police to beg them to arrest him. If they don’t, he is going to kill a man, one of his patients who works for a bank and whom he’s ordered while under hypnosis to bring him 100,000 dollars.

   (This would appear to contradict what I have always understood about hypnosis, which is that subjects won’t obey orders that are against their basic nature. But I suppose that the doctor knows his patient better than I do.)

   The cast of characters consists of an adulterous wife, a nosy reporter, two very incidental servants, a missing son, and the wife’s lover who seems to be almost everybody’s choice for the killer.

   This is not one of those legendary Paramount pictures that turn out to be long unseen gems, but a stagey, hokey melodrama that not even some good actors can save. Not a bomb, but a bottom-of-the-bill filler.