The witness for the prosecution trial#

Francis Compton is a finely learned judge and Una O'Connor is in for one great bit as a Scottish maid in the witness box. Philip Tonge makes a shrewd police inspector. It's the balancing of well-marked characters, the shifts of mood, the changes of pace and the interesting bursts of histrionics that the various actors display.Tyrone Power has his ups as the accused man, Marlene Dietrich hits her high points as his wife and Torin Thatcher is awesomely forensic as the bewigged and begowned prosecutor. Then the whole drama explodes.It's the staging of the scenes that is important in this rapidly moving film, which opened yesterday at both the Astor and the Plaza Theatres. And the air in the courtroom fairly crackles with emotional electricity, until that staggering surprise in the last reel. It's all parry and punch from the word 'Go!', which is plainly announced when the accused man is brought to Mr.

The witness for the prosecution trial#

Wilder sees to it, as the murder trial drags along and the wife, in defiance of tradition, appears as witness against her own husband, that there's never a dull or worthless moment. Except for two hurried flashbacks-the first of which amiably shows how an English chap on trial for murder met the widow he is accused of bumping off and the second of which shows in modest detail how he met his German wife-virtually everything happens in the Old Bailey or in the chambers Mr.

Wilder and Harry Kurnitz have prepared, puts forth most of its helpful information in back-and-forth dialogue. The viewer is likely to grow restive waiting for something to happen on the screen.And it is true that the screenplay of this one, which Mr. This results mainly from Billy Wilder's splendid staging of some splintering courtroom scenes and a first-rate theatrical performance by Charles Laughton in the defense-attorney role.As a usual thing, these trial dialogues about where somebody was and what took place on the night of something or other become increasingly hard to take as witness follows witness and the examiners probe for key details. film production of the Agatha Christie play 'Witness for the Prosecution' comes off extraordinarily well. FOR a courtroom melodrama pegged to a single plot device-a device that, of course, everybody promises not to reveal-the Arthur Hornblow Jr.