In the film, a man accused of killing a wealthy widow who had named him as the main beneficiary in her will undergoes a trial during which his wife testifies against him.
Plot
Senior barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts, who is nearing retirement after suffering from a heart attack, agrees to defend Leonard Vole over the objections of Robarts' private nurse Miss Plimsoll, Sir Wilfrid's doctor having warned against taking on stressful criminal cases. Vole is accused of murdering Emily French, a wealthy, childless widow who had fallen in love with him and named him as the main beneficiary in her will.
When Sir Wilfrid speaks with Vole's German wife Christine, he finds her cold and self-possessed, but she does provide an alibi, although it is not entirely convincing. During the trial in the Old Bailey, the Crown introduces testimony that Mrs. French had seen Vole with a younger woman and planned to confront him, but Sir Wilfrid believes his client to be innocent. He is shocked when Christine is called to give evidence against Vole as a prosecution witness.
While a wife cannot be compelled to testify against her husband, it is revealed in court that her marriage to Vole is invalid, as she was already married to another man, Otto Helm, who is still alive and living in Germany. She states that she never loved Leonard, and her conscience compels her to tell the truth. She explains that she had gone through a ceremony of marriage with Leonard, a Royal Air Force officer serving in Berlin's British occupation zone, solely to escape from Soviet-controlled territory to the West. According to her testimony, Leonard confessed that after being confronted by Mrs. French, he had killed her to avoid being disinherited from her will.
Now fearing that his client must inevitably be convicted and sentenced to hang, Sir Wilfrid is unexpectedly and fortuitously contacted by a woman who offers to sell him letters written by Christine to a lover named Max. The handwriting is genuine, and the woman has a legitimate reason for providing the letters: she had been attacked and her face disfigured by her lover. During cross examination, Sir Wilfred reads the letters, which disclose a conspiracy between Max and Christine to frame Leonard. The jury acquits Leonard of murder, much to the crowd's delight.
Sir Wilfrid is troubled, and his worries prove justified when Christine, brought into the courtroom for safety after being assailed by the departing crowd, tells him what she had done to secure the acquittal. After Sir Wilfrid had told Christine before the trial that an alibi contributed by a loving wife would not be believed by a jury, she had posed as a hateful, double-crossing wife. She also wrote letters to a non-existent lover and played the disfigured woman who gave Sir Wilfred the same letters, in order to discredit her own testimony. Christine now says that she loves Leonard, but knew all along that he was guilty. Christine has actually told the truth about the murder in the witness-box: Leonard did, in fact, confess to her.
Leonard, having overheard Christine, gleefully boasts that he had indeed manipulated and murdered Mrs. French. Sir Wilfrid, who had sincerely believed in his client’s innocence, is outraged. However, due to English double jeopardy laws, no further legal action can be taken against Leonard.
Leonard announces that he really has been having an affair with the much younger woman seen by Mrs. French, for whom he now plans to abandon Christine. He smugly states that though Christine will now be tried for perjury, he and she are now even, as they both saved each other's lives. A devastated Christine grabs a knife and stabs Leonard, killing him. As she is arrested, Sir Wilfrid decides to further delay his retirement to serve as Christine Vole's defence counsel.
Ben Wright as court clerk (the officer reading charges)
Production
Producers Arthur Hornblow and Edward Small bought the rights to the play for $450,000. The play was adjusted to emphasize the character of the defence barrister.[3] Billy Wilder was signed to direct in April 1956.[4] According to Wilder, when the producers approached Marlene Dietrich about the part, she accepted on the condition that Wilder direct. Wilder said that Dietrich liked "to play a murderess" but was "a little bit embarrassed when playing the love scenes."[5]
Vivien Leigh was considered for the role of Christine Vole.[6] Laughton based his performance on Florance Guedella, his own lawyer, an Englishman who was known for twirling his monocle while cross-examining witnesses.[3]
In a flashback showing how Leonard and Christine first meet in a German nightclub, she is wearing her trademark trousers, made famous by Dietrich in director Josef von Sternberg’s film Morocco (1930).[7] A rowdy customer rips them down one side, revealing one of Dietrich's renowned legs and starting a brawl. The scene required 145 extras and 38 stuntmen, and cost $90,000.[8] The bar is called Die blaue Laterne (English: The Blue Lantern), which is a reference to Dietrich's famous film The Blue Angel.
United Artists' "surprise ending"
At the end of the film, as the credits roll, a voiceover announces:
The management of this theater suggests that, for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.[9]
This was in keeping with the advertising campaign for the film. One of the posters said: "You'll talk about it! - but please don't tell the ending!"[10]
The effort to keep the ending a secret extended to the cast. Billy Wilder did not allow the actors to view the final ten pages of the script until it was time to shoot those scenes. The secrecy reportedly cost Marlene Dietrich an Academy Award, as United Artists did not want to call attention to the fact that Dietrich was practically unrecognizable as the Cockney woman who hands over the incriminating letters to the defense.[11]
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "... [T]here's never a dull or worthless moment. It's all parry and punch from the word 'Go!', which is plainly announced when the accused man is brought to Mr. Laughton at the beginning of the film. And the air in the courtroom fairly crackles with emotional electricity, until that staggering surprise in the last reel. Then the whole drama explodes. It's the staging of the scenes that is important in this rapidly moving film ... It's the balancing of well-marked characters, the shifts of mood, the changes of pace and the interesting bursts of histrionics that the various actors display."[4]
Agatha Christie "herself considered it the finest film derived from one of her stories."[12][13] It currently holds a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 40 reviews with an average rating of 8.7/10.[14] In TV Guide's review of the film, it received four and a half stars out of five, the writer saying that "Witness for the Prosecution is a witty, terse adaptation of the Agatha Christie hit play brought to the screen with ingenuity and vitality by Billy Wilder."[15]
Witness for the Prosecution was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on December 11, 2001 as a Region 1 widescreen DVD, and by Kino Lorber (under license from MGM) on Blu-ray on July 22, 2014 as a Region 1 widescreen disc.
Billy Wilder was an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He was born in Sucha Beskidzka, Poland, a town in Austria-Hungary at the time of his birth. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Charles Laughton was a British and American actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" Dietrich was a German-born American actress and singer whose career spanned nearly seven decades.
Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was a British actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.
Dead Man's Folly is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October 1956 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 5 November of the same year. The US edition retailed at $2.95 and the UK edition at twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6). It features Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver.
Sad Cypress is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March 1940 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at eight shillings and threepence (8/3) – the first price rise for a UK Christie edition since her 1921 debut – and the US edition retailed at $2.00.
Murder Is Easy is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1939, and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in September the same year under the title Easy to Kill. Christie's Superintendent Battle has a cameo appearance at the end, but plays no part in either the solution of the mystery or the apprehension of the criminal. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6), and the US edition at $2.
The Hound of Death and Other Stories is a collection of twelve short stories by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom in October 1933. Unusually, the collection was not published by Christie's regular publishers, William Collins & Sons, but by Odhams Press, and was not available to purchase in shops.
Alibi is a 1928 play by Michael Morton based on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, a 1926 novel by British crime writer Agatha Christie.
"The Witness for the Prosecution" is a short story and play by British author Agatha Christie. The story was initially published as "Traitor's Hands" in Flynn's, a weekly pulp magazine, in the edition of 31 January 1925.
Witness for the Prosecution is a play adapted by Agatha Christie from her 1925 short story "Traitor's Hands". The play opened in London on 28 October 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre. It was produced by Sir Peter Saunders.
Rembrandt is a 1936 British biographical film made by London Film Productions of the life of 17th-century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. The film was produced and directed by Alexander Korda from a screenplay by June Head and Lajos Bíró based on a story by Carl Zuckmayer. The music score was by Geoffrey Toye and the cinematography by Georges Périnal.
The 15th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film for 1957 films, were held on February 22, 1958.
Arthur Hornblow Jr. was an American film producer. Four of his movies received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture.
Spider's Web is a play by crime writer Agatha Christie. Spider's Web, which premiered in London's West End in 1954, is Agatha Christie's second most successful play, having run longer than Witness for the Prosecution, which premiered in 1953. It is surpassed only by Christie's record-breaking The Mousetrap, which has run continuously since opening in the West End in 1952.
Witness for the Prosecution is a 1982 American made-for-television drama film version of Agatha Christie's 1925 short story and 1953 play, and also a remake of the Billy Wilder film Witness for the Prosecution (1957).
Marlene Dietrich was a German and American actress and singer.
Passport to Destiny is a 1944 RKO Radio Pictures war film, starring Elsa Lanchester as an English charwoman who, believing herself invulnerable by being protected by a magic eye amulet, travels to Nazi Germany to personally assassinate Adolf Hitler.
The Witness for the Prosecution is a 2016 British mystery drama thriller television serial broadcast on BBC One over Christmas 2016. The two-part programme was adapted by Sarah Phelps and directed by Julian Jarrold and is based on Agatha Christie's short story of the same name. The expanded plot is based on Christie's original short story with the original ending, which is different than that of previous stage, film and television versions, including Billy Wilder's 1957 film version.
Truth Has a Voice is an Egyptian drama film released in 1976. It was directed by Hassan al-Imam as a kind of remake of his earlier 1951 release حكم القوى, starring Mohsen Sarhan and Huda Sultan. The 1976 edition features a screenplay based on a novel by French author Jules Mary with Egyptian dialogue localized by al-Imam. Soheir Ramzi, Nabila Ebeid, Yousuf Shaaban, and Samir Sabri star in a tale of a song-and-dance troupe mired in massive debt. The theatre company stumbles into a mystery when one of the leaders is found by another murdered after a dispute with a lender. The film premiered in Egyptian theaters on December 20, 1976.
↑ "Top Grossers of 1958". Variety. January 7, 1959. p.48. Please note figures are for US and Canada only and are domestic rentals accruing to distributors as opposed to theatre gross
Aldridge, Mark (2016). "Chapter 5: Christie Films Make an Impact: Spoilers: And Then There Were None; 'Philomel Cottage'; Love from a Stranger; Witness for the Prosecution". Agatha Christie on Screen. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp.79–94. ISBN978-1-3496-7695-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
