Retro Reel by Sreepathy, Volume 4

About ‘Retro Reel’ and Sreepathy Retro Reel is a column about movies, but it isn’t about reviews of the latest box-office releases. To be sure, there will be aspects of review, but the column is intended more as a recommendation of good movies of different genres, with the sense of a retrospective. Hence, the ‘Retro’ in the name. In a day and age when movies are projected digitally, the word “reel” may seem retrograde and outdated. Yet no other word captures the imagery of a movie as “Reel”… Sreepathy is a a self-confessed, unabashed movie buff who loves a well-told onscreen story.He has always been fascinated with movies ,especially the way they translate oral or written words into visual ones. He has a list of about 450 must watch movies and , “Retro Reel” is an attempt to share with friends of a similar bent of mind, some of the best movie-watching experiences he has had.He lives in Naperville with his wife and two sons.

Witness for the Prosecution

The Holy Bible. William Shakespeare. Agatha Christie.

I can see those quizzical eyebrows furrowing, trying to mentally connect the dots between God’s word, poetic texts, and crime-thrillers…So, here you go: According to very reliable records, when it comes to all that has ever been written, printed, sold, and distributed, only the first two names outsell the third one! Now that for you is the astounding popularity of Agatha Christie’s writing prowess…

Though there are very few contenders for the sobriquet “Queen of Crime”, it couldn’t have been conferred on a more deserving mystery writer than Christie. Most of her work is in the form of crime novels, but she enjoys a reputation for her romantic novels, in addition to several sharp short-stories and some riveting plays. . “Witness for the Prosecution”, one of her finest plays and her own personal favorite, has been adapted to the screen under the same name.

Though a crime-thriller, WFTP is not your typical whodunit that cracks a mystery and finds the murderer; in fact, there is not even another suspect in the entire story. The thrill in the narrative doesn’t come from figuring who did it, but from waiting for what happens next. In that respect, WFTP is one of the best stories in terms of plotting and the use of plot-devices. In a thriller especially, the writer introduces a big twist in the plot to achieve a dramatic shift in the storyline. But the bigger the twist, the bigger is the risk that it will tend to stretch its plausibility. However, in WFTP Agatha Christie brings all her accomplished skills of storytelling to deliver not just one, but a series of big yet very convincing plot-twists. With each twist, you still remain plausibly involved with the story and its characters instead of questioning what just happened…And that is no mean achievement for the creative abilities of a storyteller.

…The movie, set in 1950s London, starts with an out-of-job, young man, Leonard Vole, who is about to be arrested for the murder of an affluent, middle-aged widow who liked him because of the attention he lavished on her. Everything points to him as the only suspect – the time, the place, the motive, but mostly the motive since he is the biggest beneficiary in the widow’s will…He is brought to Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a barrister-at-law, whose biggest strength – fighting criminal cases – has turned into his biggest weakness thanks to a recent heart-attack. Though he has been advised against high-stress criminal cases, Sir Wilfrid initially dilly-dallies about taking on Vole’s case, but finally succumbs to the thrill of the challenge and agrees to represent him in court…

…The only ray of hope for Vole in the watertight case against him is his wife, Christine, who can give him an alibi for the time of the murder. She meets Sir Wilfrid only to be told that the testimony of a wife in favor of her husband would not be taken seriously by any jury. And there, you have the first major plot-device in the story…So, Christine decides not to give favorable testimony, does a U-turn, becomes a witness for the prosecution, and damns her husband in open court to bring on the second big turn in the narrative…Now, here’s the third twister: under British law, a wife cannot give testimony against her husband in court. Yet, she manages to do it – but how? If I reveal anything more of the twists and turns and lanes and by-lanes that this movie courses through, I may risk some dark fate myself! So, let me stop here by saying that the story ends on one of the most dramatic notes that I have ever read or seen onscreen…When she wrote it originally, Agatha Christie had a startling ending to the story, but in deference to the then prevailing zeitgeist of British society, she changed it to its existing version, which is equally startling…

As for the movie honors, one of the most respected Hollywood directors of his time, Billy Wilder (our own Satyajit Ray greatly admired him and learnt movie craft from him), directs WFTP in one of the finest adaptations of a play. It’s always difficult to bring to screen a successful play or short story, but Wilder does it in a smooth, seamless sort of way that keeps the suspense and brilliance of Christie’s play intact…Tyrone Power plays the accused man, but the script doesn’t give him much to do in the role. The bulk of the best acting, and casting, is reserved for the other two principal characters played by Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich.

Laughton, a well-known British character actor, is a powerhouse performer who brings unbelievable gusto to the stress-loving barrister who is also a curmudgeon – that word never fitted any other screen character better. To tap into the tremendous talent of Laughton, Billy Wilder and his writers have added to the brilliant lawyer’s character to make it meatier than in the original play. The actor combines arrogance, irascibility, and humor like only a Brit can…But it is Marlene Dietrich, playing Vole’s wife, who steals the show with her display of acting skills of a staggering range. In quite a few scenes, with her sense of the stern and the secretive, she clearly upstages someone of the enormous stature of Laughton. On a lighter note, just to show a flash of Marlene Dietrich’s famous legs, apparently a whole scene was written that required 145 extras, 38 stunt men, and cost 90,000 in 1950s dollars!

Even though it is listed as one of the ten best movie courtroom dramas ever, WFTP never devolves into a series of cold, clinical legal exchanges between the prosecution and the defense, a la “Law & Order” or “CSI”. Like in most of her work, Agatha Christie pays as much attention to development of character as she does to cleverness of plotting. The other striking aspect of the movie is the unmistakable gentle British humor that permeates it…Ultimately, Agatha Christie, unlike most other crime-writers, managed to bring a quiet sort of elegance and warmth to her stories and characters that otherwise deal with the darkness of death and dismemberment…

Watch “Witness for the Prosecution” and I assure you, you will come away wondering less about murder than about the mystery of love’s contradictions …

PS: If you live in the US, you should be able to borrow DVDs for most of the movies recommended in ‘RetroReel’ from your local public library.