| Overall Grade: |
A- |
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| Story: |
B+ |
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| Acting: |
A- |
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| Direction: |
A- |
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| Visuals: |
B+ |
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Witness a great film
by TonyM (movies profile)
Jul 13, 2008
In this Agatha Christie novel turned into an excellent adaptation by Larry Marcus and brought to the big screen by Billy Wilder, who also wrote the screenplay with Harry Kurnitz. Tyrone Power plays a man charged with murder, Leonard Steven Vole. In the film, Charles Laughton is talked out of retirement on medicinal grounds to play Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Power’s lawyer). The film is set in the ‘Old Bailey’ and among the others actors, Marlene Dietrich plays Vole’s secret lover Christine Helm excellently and Vole rescued her from a crumbling Germany.
In the film, Power is accused of murdering an aging widow for a cash settlement she has written into her will, prior to her death. The film is one of Wilder’s better films and how could he fail, it is like a small play set in and around the goings-on of a big murder trial. As well as, Dietrich performance and the other main actors check both Elsa Lanchester who plays Laughton’s ever put-upon nurse Miss Plimsoll and lastly John Williams who plays Laughton’s second in command Brogan-Moore. I do not want to go into too much detail because the film itself does the job of entertaining you from the minute it starts, lots of twists and turns, a worthy use of any 90 minutes of any decent film goer. |
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