Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. Because the new Conjuring movie didn’t scratch our itch for (supernatural) legal fireworks, we’re coping with five days of courtroom dramas.
Witness For The Prosecution (1957)
Neither Billy Wilder nor Agatha Christie were particularly known for courtroom dramas, which makes Witness For The Prosecution an odd, delightful standout in both their careers. Christie’s short story “The Witness For The Prosecution” was turned into a hit play of the same name four years before the film. It was Marlene Dietrich who brought it to her friend Wilder, saying that if he would direct it, she would star in the title role.
Credit Dietrich for knowing a perfect fit when she saw one (and snagging top billing ahead of formidable co-stars Charles Laughton and Tyrone Power). The enigmatic German actress was the ideal performer to play the mysterious Christine Vole. In post-war London, Leonard Vole (Power) is a charming, caddish American accused of murdering an older, wealthy woman that he’s been spending time with. His only hope is the alibi of his ostensibly devoted wife. But when Vole’s barrister, the prominent defense attorney Sir Wilfrid Roberts (Laughton), interviews Mrs. Vole, she curiously doesn’t seem to care if her husband is sent to the gallows or not. The root of her indifference follows a corkscrew path of plot turns that are head-spinning even by Agatha Christie standards, resulting in a series of revelatory climaxes.
Wilder knew that Christie was excellent at crafting the arc of a story, especially with those twists she was bound to drop toward the end. But her work sometimes lacked audience-pleasing intricacies of dialogue and character. (As the director put it to Cameron Crowe in the book Conversations With Wilder, “She had structure, but she lacked poetry.”) This is where Wilder and his collaborators stepped in, making it so that the screen version of Sir Wilfrid was recovering from a heart attack and gifting him with an incessantly cheerful but stern nursemaid, Miss Plimsoll, played by Laughton’s wife, Elsa Lanchester (best remembered as The Bride Of Frankenstein). The humorous barbed interplay between the pair (Plimsoll: “We better go upstairs now, get undressed, and lie down.” Sir Wilfrid: “We? What a nauseating prospect.”) helped offset the taut dramatics of the courtroom case.
Wilder shot Witness in black and white, and the starkness of the palette seems to underline the obdurate rules of English law, even as various grays begin to emerge. Technicolor would have been wasted on the gloomy London landscape and on the austere courtroom where more than half of the film unfolds. Many of the theatrical tropes of the genre are on full display: the barrister murmuring a question to prove a witness is hard of hearing; the purposeful misidentification of vital evidence; the unrestrained dramatic protests of the accused, vainly trying to prove his innocence. But the heart of the movie is Sir Wilfrid and Miss Plimsoll, his constant nuisance. Wilder credited Laughton’s “tremendous presence,” not just when hurling dagger-like inquiries at the witness stand but also during moments of charming mischief—hiding cigars in his cane, substituting brandy for cocoa in his thermos—conceived for the screen version of the character. Wilder creation Miss Plimsoll, savvy to all of Wilfrid’s subterfuge, refuses to give up on her charge, just as Wilfrid obsesses about the Vole case even with his health in the balance.
Just like Psycho a few years later (and in fact, Alfred Hitchcock later remarked that people often assumed that he had directed this film), Witness For The Prosecution instigated an urgent campaign to keep the movie’s shocking ending from the public—by not seating people within the final 10 minutes, for example. In the trailer, Laughton cautions audiences to preserve the twists for their friends, “because you won’t want to spoil their excitement and their fun.” But thanks to Wilder, there’s fun to be had in all of Witness For The Prosecution, not just in the jaw-dropping finale that was a Christie speciality.
Availability: Witness For The Prosecution is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi (with ads). It can also be rented or purchased digitally from Google Play, Apple TV, YouTube, Microsoft, and VUDU.
24 Comments
There’s also a very watchable version from 1982 with Ralph Richardson, Deborah Kerr, and Diana Rigg.
Definitely worth avoiding any and all spoilers; just enjoy it happening.
Charles Laughton is an absolute delight. There’s a bit early on when he tells a friend to pay Elsa Lancaster and politely kick her down the stairs that I still quote to this day. Stellar film.
Billy Wilder was a master. He had a special talent for finding just the right mix of comedy and tragedy. It’s amazing that he directed most of his films in his third language.All he did in in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s was crank out pure box office gold. In addition to Witness for the Prosecution, the list of films he produced in that 30 year span includes Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, The Spirit of St. Louis, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and The Fortune Cookie. All classics. He had the top actors of the day lining up to appear in his films—William Holden, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, , Gary Cooper, Shirley McClaine, Ray Walston, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and Audrey Hepburn were among those who starred in multiple films for him. I haven’t seen every film he directed, but I can say that none of the ones I have seen have ever disappointed. I still go back and watch them again and again. To paraphrase the great Ricky Bobby, the man woke up every morning and pissed movie excellence.
A master indeed. Ace in the Hole is one of his absolute greatest works.
How could you go wrong with Kirk Douglas?
Wilder was so good. Sunset Boulevard could have been a straight film noir, but it’s funny (darkly funny) as hell. Double Indemnity – ever-tightening suspense, but with hilarious banter and gentle workplace humor to boot. Stalag 17 ? a war drama, but grimly funny. Witness for the Prosecution, which I haven’t seen in decades, just sparkles with with along with the melodrama of the courtroom case. So when Wilder did actual comedies, like Some Like it Hot and Seven Year Itch and Fortune Cookie…. well, it’s no wonder they’re just flat-out hilarious.
The last line in Stalag 17 is a great example. “Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire cutters.”
Well, nobody’s perfect.
And he wrote Ninotchka and Ball of Fire, in addition to most of the films he also directed.
The Apartment is so damn good.
I doubt this would be as well remembered, without the addition of Miss Plimsoll and her byplay with Sir Wilfrid. OTOH, Power is very good playing against type as the cad, and of course it’s always fun to watch Marlene being Marlene. The bit with the monocle was apparently Laughton’s own idea.
One of the first ‘adult’ films I saw on TV as a kid. Totally blown away and started my love of movies. Couple years ago I was in London and they were doing the play in an actual old courtroom, with marble pillars and the ceiling was 3 storeys up. Not as good as the film but pretty cool.
The spoiler warning was not just in the trailer — there’s actually a spoken warning in the end credits asking you not to reveal the ending to your friends. Not only #thanosdemandsyoursilence, but #laughtondoestoo.
“lacked poetry” is a bit of an understatement.My favourite bit of Christie’s writing was a husband talking to his wife: “You know our daughter, Edith?”
I believe there was already a stage version of this before the screenplay makeover. I saw a community theater performance some years back, and it pretty much defined “prosaic”.
I first saw this as a regional theater production and the revelation at the end was underwhelming. Duh, that witness is clearing being played by the same actress as that other character.
Oh, thank you. I needed a good, out-of-nowhere laugh today.
People love their Hepburn/Tracy, but Lanchester/Laughton are just as much a of joy to watch on screen as any of the more well known Hollywood pairings.
Charles and Elsa were married, after all.
I understand that Elsa Lanchester’s Miss Plimsoll was added to the movie because Laughton was old and ailing at the time, and this way she (Mrs. Laughton) could keep an eye on her husband’s health.
“She had structure, but she lacked poetry.”Ooh, yet another thing I have to thank Billy Wilder for: putting into exact words my main issue with Agatha Christie’s writing style.
Until now the only thing I knew about this movie is that it inspired the porn title Wetness For the Prosecution.
Thank you for the LOL- much needed today!