Counterfeit

A car crashes through a billboard that reads “Drive Carefully — Death is Permanent” in Erle C. Kentin’s compact and occasionally clever proto-noir, Counterfeit, which depicts the tricks and travails of a counterfeiting ring led by well-educated gangster Capper Stevens (Lloyd Nolan) who masquerades as a stomach doctor. Chester Morris stars as John Joseph Madden, a U.S. Treasury agent who goes undercover to infiltrate the Stevens gang after they kidnap a veteran Treasury engraver (the caricatural Claude Gillingwater) and force him to produce fraudulent plates for making the “queer money” in a remote basement. If the film has a femme fatale, it’s Aimee Maxwell (Margot Grahame), Stevens’ moll who lures the engraver into the gang’s car, but she becomes slightly more sympathetic after her innocent sister Verna (Marian Marsh) accidentally becomes involved with the gang (“she’s not like us, you know”). The film is somewhat cold for the period despite a sappy ending and touches of comic relief (“Interested in freaks?” Madden asks his companion Verna in front of a carnival freak show booth, to which she replies, “No, and I wouldn’t be walking around with one if I could help it”). Cinematographer Stumar finds occasional opportunities for unique camera angles and asymmetrical blocking, but Counterfeit primarily sticks to the classical, pre-noir style.