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Saturday, September 2, 2017

WITNESS TO MURDER (1954)

Close only counts in horseshoes . . . and movies. As in this not-quite-there Chester Erskine production, from his original script, with journeyman director Roy Rowland & lenser John (‘Prince of Darkness’) Alton not always able to get around a thuddingly obvious first act and some all too convenient plot beats that come into play when Barbara Stanwyck looks across the street from her apartment window to witness George Sanders killing his mistress.* The police investigate, but Sanders cleaned up too well. No evidence; so Stanwyck’s insistence looks like hysteria. She stews while Sanders sets up traps to incriminate her for slander & harassment, even with detective Gary Merrill on her side & offering a sympathetic shoulder. But Erskine doesn’t sweat the details, so the film keeps bumping up against its own plot twists, leaning too hard on overheard conversations & apartment break-ins to move ahead. Still, the basic idea takes hold, and the characterizations are a lot of fun; Merrill & Stanwyck match up nicely while Sanders has a field day with his calm Nietzschean Superman demeanor. And if too much suspense gets left on the table, enough comes thru to induce a reasonable pay-off in shivers.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Alton helps Stanwyck on her close-ups with what looks to be carefully judged gauze shots rather than the more common soft-focus or Vaseline-on-the-lens tricks.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Often compared to Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW/’54 (which opened later), WITNESS is closer to Stanwyck’s own SORRY, WRONG NUMBER/’48 and to THE WINDOW/’49, a minor classic with young Bobby Driscoll unable to convince anyone he’s seen a murder; developed from the same Cornell Woolrich short story used for REAR WINDOW.

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