Review of Witness for the Prosecution (1957) by Elizabeth S — 15 Mar 2012

Ooh, this is a tough one. I had heard it was great and that its twist ending was brilliant and one of the best ever. That was sadly very, very wrong. The twist ending was actually one of the worst done and worst written twist endings I have ever seen. Twists done correctly are brilliant and somewhat chilling, and in my opinion that almost always comes from a combination of relevance to something earlier in the plot and/or an explanation of something in the way you would least expect. And of course it has to be interesting and surprising. This film just explains the last ten minutes or so, regardless of the rest of the movie, and springs a bunch of surprises without any relevance to anything else ever established in the plot. Like screaming "John McClane cheated once in high school!" at the end of Die Hard. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot or the film, and it is totally unnecessary. Especially seeing how acclaimed this ending was supposed to have been it is doubly disappointing therefore.

Then of course there are the performances. Tyrone Power is quite good in this by being frantic and consistently innocent-looking. Charles Laughton gives a spectacular performance which is both hilariously funny and very impressive and compelling at the same time. Marlene Dietrich, however, is nowhere near as good. Actually I thought she was really annoying and bad. Her performance at the end was so overdone and silly that I couldn't help not taking the ending seriously, which probably factors into my above statements on the ending's quality.

Overall, a good film made great by some of the performances and the excellent cinematography and photography and the first three quarters of the film. Other than that, it's hard to look on this as the magnificent film it is supposed to be.