Billy Wilder’s courtroom thriller is sharply acted and consistently entertaining, though its plotting sometimes asks too much of the characters. Charles Laughton’s barrister is reason enough to watch.
Billy Wilder makes Witness for the Prosecution a briskly enjoyable evening of disputed testimony and bruised vanity, with Charles Laughton given ample room to be difficult. We recommend it, allowing for a plot that occasionally asks its characters to behave for the sake of a surprise. Wilder and fellow screenwriter Harry Kurnitz understand that a courtroom thriller needs more than a puzzle. We have to enjoy listening to the people doing the arguing.
Laughton plays Sir Wilfrid as a man who enjoys his own intelligence and expects everyone else to find it equally rewarding. The performance is broad, sometimes insistently so, but its vanity is funny because the mind behind it stays busy. We laughed at his bickering with Elsa Lanchester’s Miss Plimsoll, whose refusal to be impressed makes his fussing funnier. Lanchester understands exactly how much force to give her replies, and the exchanges benefit from having someone prepared to argue back.
Tyrone Power has the less immediately rewarding task as Leonard Vole, a man whose involvement in a murder case invites us to inspect every word. He makes the character interesting enough to follow without competing with Laughton for the largest performance. Marlene Dietrich’s Christine is still more absorbing: we find ourselves considering what she means even when the dialogue appears straightforward. Wilder gives these actors time to complicate our first impressions, which matters in a story so dependent on testimony.
Alexandre Trauner’s recreation of the Old Bailey gives all this talking a substantial setting, with enough institutional grandeur to make personal vanity look faintly ridiculous. Russell Harlan’s cinematography makes good use of that scale without diminishing the faces we need to study. The film’s theatrical origins remain apparent, particularly when the dialogue does almost all the work of moving a scene forward. Wilder’s staging nevertheless makes speaking and listening sufficiently tense that the relative lack of physical action rarely becomes a problem.
Daniel Mandell’s editing is especially useful in keeping the comedy attached to the case. The exchanges have time to land, but they do not make the legal proceedings feel like an interruption to a separate comedy about Sir Wilfrid. Matty Malneck’s music supports the melodrama without competing with the dialogue, though little of it stayed with us afterwards. At 116 minutes, the film allows a generous helping of Laughton without letting his performance bring proceedings to a halt.
The reservation is the increasingly elaborate plotting. Wilder and Kurnitz keep the dialogue lively, but the people sometimes have to do what will produce the next surprise rather than what seems plausible for them. We will not describe the developments that expose this weakness; it is enough to say that the script gives the actors some awkward things to justify. The pleasure of watching it depends on accepting a few of those turns without demanding a full explanation.
Among courtroom thrillers, this belongs firmly with those that make an entertainment of the personalities conducting the case. Wilder allows their humour to occupy time that a more impatient film might spend hurrying to the next disclosure. Anyone chiefly interested in strict plausibility may find the comedy insufficient compensation, but we would happily sit through another argument with this company. Watch it with someone who can resist discussing their theory over the next line of dialogue.
