Plot
Austin Spencer, a wealthy newspaper publisher who opposes the death penalty, wants to prove a point about the inadequacy of circumstantial evidence. He talks his daughter Susan's fiancé, successful novelist and former employee Tom Garrett, into participating in a hoax in an attempt to expose the city's overzealous district attorney. The plan is for Tom to plant clues that will lead to his arrest for the recent murder of a female nightclub dancer, Patty Gray. Once Tom is found guilty, Spencer is to reveal the setup, curb the District Attorney, and strike a blow for restraint.
Tom agrees to the plan, and is convicted on an entirely circumstantial case. Spencer then is killed in a car accident before he can present the exonerating evidence the pair had meticulously preserved: staged photographs and a paper trail of receipts for purchases used in the frame-up all are burned into unrecognizability in the fiery wreck. Tom ends up on death row in prison.
However, a few hours before his scheduled execution and in time to prove the two men's well-planned ruse, a handwritten statement made by Spencer to be read in case of his death before Tom was cleared is discovered by his executor. It is sufficient to arrange for Tom‘s pardon.
However, while talking to his now-ex-fiancée Susan shortly before the Governor can sign the pardon, Garrett inadvertently reveals he knows the murder victim's real name, which had never been brought out during the trial. Convinced Susan will sympathize with his rational, he confesses that the murder victim was actually his estranged wife, Emma Blucher, who unbeknownst to him had reneged on her college-era promise to divorce him, and reappeared into his world upon the sweeping success of his recently published first novel. Determined to blackmail her way to an unfair share of his newfound prosperity, and still refuse to grant him a divorce, he decided that the her father's proposed hoax would be the perfect cover for a real murder. Susan, through a friend on the police force who had been supporting her effort to clear Tom, notifies the authorities and the pardon is canceled before the double jeopardy rule can save him. The film closes with Tom being led back to his cell pending his imminent execution.
Reception
Critical response
Reappraisal of the film in modern times has been mixed.
Keith M. Booker wrote in 2011 that Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is "perhaps the bleakest of his [Lang's] American noir films". [5] Dennis L. White described the film in 1992 as having "considerable impact, due not so much to visual style, but as to the narrative structure and mood and to the expertly devised plot, in which the turnabout is both surprising and convincing." [6] Stella Bruzzi, author of Men's Cinema: Masculinity and Mise en Scène in Hollywood, felt in 2013 that the film plot was "overly schematic" and "motivated by a paradox", affecting "an invisible, transparent style while, at the same time, being all about surface and performance". She adds that Lang "deploys an ostentatiously unintrusive 'classical' style", which he "purposefully reduces down to its minimalist bare necessities". [7] Writer James McKay noted in 2010 that Fontaine as Susan Spencer is "a little bit more forward than we normally expect, in a role that requires her to do all the running where her man's concerned". [3]
Film critic Dennis Schwartz wrote a mixed review in 2007, but appreciated Lang's efforts: "Cheerlessly written with many plot holes, implausible contrivances and legal absurdities by law school graduate Douglas Morrow, though ably directed by film noir maven Fritz Lang ( M / While the City Sleeps / Scarlet Street ). Lang's last American film is a low-budget twisty courtroom drama about the dangers of capital punishment that ends up being about something more intangible--the unpredictability of fate ... But in this subversive film a perverse atmosphere of subliminal uncertainty prevails over the established surface reality, and the surprise ending comes as more of an emotional shock than as a real surprise--allowing the filmmaker to pass on his cynicism and disillusionment over the human condition. The stark, alluring and unconventional film is worth seeing for the ingenuous way it resolves the brain-teasing dilemma it raised." [8]
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