"Guilty ... Or not guilty?"

Title: Witness for the Prosecution 

Year: 1957
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mistery
Director: Billy Wilder
Writer: Billy Wilder, Harry Kurnitz (Agatha Christie´s international stage success)
Runtime: 116min
Cast: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton.
Produc.: Edward Small Productions
Budget: $3 million approx.

Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), and attractive young man, is accused of murdering the wealthy Mrs. French (Norma Varden), a woman over whom he was friendly. This accusation arises from the fact that Mrs. French had chosen him as the inheritor of her fortune, in the case the she should perish. Thus, the defendant decides to hire Sir Wilfrid (Charles Laughton) to defend himself.

In the year 50, Billy Wilder did for my liking what very few directors manage to do more than once, which it is to direct a masterpiece. In fact, I have not seen all his films, but within what I know, Sunset Boulevard was a perfect movie. Seven years later Wilder would delight us with another stunning demonstration of how to make movies, though even in the case of a film with a gripping ending of those which are very little, this director failed to find perfection, as he had done it before.

Witness for the Prosecution was a drama with hints of comedy, based on a play written by Agatha Christie. In it, the first character we are introduced is Sir. Wilfrid, in the way of a veteran and experienced lawyer, who seems to reserve his intellectual gifts exclusively for the legal field. Being this the case of an individual who has just left a hospital and who suffers from heart problems, he is not, on the contrary, capable of following almost at any moment the indications of Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester), the nurse who looks after him. In this way, the entire comical approach delivered by Wilder is restricted to the "nurse – capricious patient" relationship, curiously played by two actors who were husband and wife in real life. There are times where, while we are completely focused on the trial, Miss Plimsoll passes onto her patient the urgent notice that he has to take his pills, although he is in full exercise of his work.

Wilder shows us here, how a film about the reconstruction and resolution of a crime can keep us trapped until the last minute.

My rating: 9/10

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