Witness For the Prosecution | Blu-ray Review

As far as pulpy vintage courtroom dramas go, Billy Wilder’s 1957 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s famed play, Witness for the Prosecution, is hard to beat. By today’s standards, the twists and turns of its once inventive surprise ending has the potential for quaintness, perhaps because it’s something we’ve come to expect from the genre. However, one can’t deny the power of its superb screenplay and a pair of electric performances that make everything wholly unrealistic yet oh-so-watchable. In the pantheon of Wilder’s legacy, it’s not his strongest title, but it stands out, though perhaps for reasons not apparent upon its initial release.

When a wealthy widow (Eleanor Audley) is found murdered, the married man that had been wooing her, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is arrested for the crime considering he had recently been named benefactor in a revised will. Vole’s solicitor seeks the help of barrister Sir Wilfrid (Charles Laughton), who has just returned from the hospital following a near fatal heart attack. While an outpatient nurse (Elsa Lanchester) has been assigned to nag him into recovery, Laughton takes on the case. However, when Vole’s wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich) reveals she won’t be testifying in her husband’s defense, but as a witness for the prosecution, the case begins to take on tantalizing dimension.

Chronic scene chewer Charles Laughton reaches bitchy heights of surliness as ailing barrister Sir Wilfred, but his flamboyant performance compliments the dramatic material, not unlike his turn in John Farrow’s The Big Clock (1948). But Wilder’s padding of Christie’s initial play tends to feel a bit hammy as it includes the comedic distraction of Elsa Lanchester’s nurse, a performance that snagged her an Oscar nod. Laughton’s real life wife (and self-aware beard), they make an entertaining on-screen presence, but their conflicted rapport tends to grate, creating an unnecessary silliness.

As the film’s aged, it is Marlene Dietrich’s neglected performance that really shines, her over-theatricality validated by the narrative’s self-satisfied surprise. Playing herself in wartime flashbacks, the actress looks stunning even when not in sex kitten mode, getting a chance to experiment with accent. She’s the eponymous witness, and yet, Christie’s play manages to maintain a certain sense of unpredictability. While Dietrich (along with everyone else) expected to net an Oscar nod, she was famously locked out. Given the fact that she wouldn’t have any other film roles of such stature as this, it’s an unfortunate oversight. Tyrone Power, in what would be his final film role, reminds one of a smarmy George Clooney gone to seed in what stands as the weakest of the three lead performances.

Disc Review

This is first time the title is receiving a blu-ray release, and the presentation arrives without many frills. DP Russell Harlan’s precise framing lends the film a highly theatrical tone, so much so that it the film is easy to mistake for a Hitchcock title. Wilder would continue to work in black and white for special effects convenience (filming Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag for his follow-up to this, 1959’s Some Like It Hot), and one can’t help but imagine that a significant plot twist also remains successful in this film due to the same kind of technique.

Wilder and Schlondorff
Director Volker Schlondorff appears on the lone special feature, introducing a six minute interview clip where Wilder discusses the film. Mentions of Dietrich and Wilder’s thoughts on premiere crime writers like Chandler and Christie makes one wish a bit more of the interview would have been included.

Final Thoughts

A classic title well worth the blu-ray transfer, Witness for the Prosecution may wrap itself up a bit smugly, even as it spins a sharp twist, but it still stands as one of the more notable courtroom dramas even as it crackles along on a sort of contrived artifice. All the bombastic flourish may make you forget it’s not even set in the US.

Film: ★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc: ★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆