Review of Witness for the Prosecution (1957) by Edith N — 24 Jan 2007

Both ends of the credits warn you not to give away the ending. So, no spoilers here, kids, which is going to make things kind of exciting--and difficult to discuss.

Let's get a few things out of the way real quick. Yes. Elsa Lanchester is [i]delightfully[/i] annoying in this. She's supposed to be. She's driving Charles Laughton nuts. She's supposed to be. If she weren't driving us all nuts, she wouldn't be doing her job in this movie.

Tyrone Power . . . that's a little more complicated. His character is playing a role, but I can't go into detail about that without giving things away. It's enough to say that I thought it was a great role and a great performance in it.

And then, there's Marlene Dietrich. One leg in the movie cost about a ton, apparently, and dozens of extras and stunt doubles and things. And she got a musical number, because you can't have Marlene Dietrich with no musical number.

I've never really read much Christie. She doesn't do as much for me as my beloved Sayers, but hardly anyone's heard of her, and there's only a couple of versions in miniseries--one is very bad, and one is pretty good. I like Grafton, too, and there's no real drive that I've noticed to make her into movies at all. I guess people just like Christie and Doyle better, more's the pity.

Still, the plot on this one is interesting. I found the Cockney accent in the middle fake, but that's okay. Again, I can't go into why, but it is okay.

I'm glad I've seen it. It's fabulous. But I don't think I can talk about it anymore, because the spoiler temptation is just huge.