Word: asther
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Jealousy (Republic) dramatizes neurosis. The neurosis belongs to a refugee writer (Nils Asther). He is somewhat paranoiac, so his wife Janet (Jane Randolph) has to support him by driving a taxi. Her husband becomes jealous of one of her fares, a Dr. Brent (John Loder), and the doctor's handsome colleague, Monica (Karen Morley). About the time Cinemactor Asther stops threatening to commit suicide or murder, he is murdered himself. Who kills him is something of a mystery, but even those who are not much mystified will find other things to interest them in the film...
Often implausible and clumsy, Jealousy includes some good melodrama and Intelligent cinema. The refugee is well conceived and extremely well played by Nils Asther. Even better is his kindly fellow refugee (Hugo Haas). The domestic quarrels and crises are venomous and painful, well beyond Hollywood's normal handling of such unpleasantness. Karen Morley, who has not made a picture in years, is still one of the most attractive and individual cinemactresses...
Julian Karell (Nils Asther) appears at first blush to be no scientist at all, but merely a London artist of the 19303 who paints such a conventionally fashionable portrait of his socialite fiancée (Helen Walker) that some of her cultivated friends discern in it "touches of genius." Others recognize it as identical in bloom and brushwork with the work of a portraitist who died some 50 years before. Even when Artist Karell lays aside the palette for a chemist's flask he is no Frankenstein, intent on making a living man out of spare parts of dead...
...Radio) is suave Otto Kruger. As a famed criminologist, he plans and executes the "Perfect Crime" to avenge his wife's infidelity. His method: 1) A pretty blackmailer (Judith Wood) is planted as a spy in an apartment adjoining that of his wife's lover (Nils Asther); 2) Kruger steals a pistol from Asther's apartment; 3) he makes the blonde blackmailer write Asther a threatening letter; 4) he kills her with Asther's gun; 5) he plants the blackmail letter in the fireplace as a clue...
Caught in a forged chain of circumstantial evidence, Asther is convicted, sentenced to hang. Because of his wife's grief Kruger relents, tells police they have the wrong man, puts a bullet into his brain. Ably acted and directed, The Crime Doctor is noteworthy for the reptilian restraint with which Criminologist Kruger, without trying to trick his audience, commits his murder...