The Best of the Pre - 1970s Agatha Christie films? - Witness for the Prosecution

After the artistic success of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, the only notable film based on Dame Agatha Christie's stories was a remake of LOVE FROM A STRANGER with John Hodiak and Sylvia Sidney as the ill-matched couple, but re-staged in the 1890s rather than 1930 England. Then, in 1957, Billy Wilder made this production of a short story by Dame Agatha called WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. With a tip-top cast of Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lancaster, the film was a brilliantly done version of Christie's short story, changed in it's ending (but to a changed ending found in Christie's own dramatization).

Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is a salesman who meets an elderly, wealthy woman (Norma Varden) and gains her affections - much to the dislike and mistrust of her servant (Una O'Connor). O'Connor claims she saw the two together the night that Varden was beaten to death in her apartment. Vole is arrested, and his solicitor (Henry Daniell) wants England's best barrister, Sir Wilfred Robarts (Laughton) to defend him. Robarts is recovering from a heart attack, and is being nursed by Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lancaster). He is a difficult patient, and is not looking forward to an enforced rest in Bermuda. So, despite the protests of Plimsoll he takes the case. He does promise her he will listen to his doctor and take his medicine. She does not trust him.

Sir Robert meets Vole's German born wife, Christina Helm (Dietrich), who alarms him. She is too cool, to detached at her husband's peril. But he goes ahead, and is soon in court fighting a first rate opponent (Torin Thatcher as Myers), and scores some impressive points against the prosecution, especially in cross-examining O'Connor. But at the critical moment he finds that by a subtle point of law, Dietrich can testify against Power, and does so. So the plot becomes, how to defeat this "witness for the prosecution"? Is there something that can turn the tables on her and her testimony.

And the evidence to use against Dietrich does appear - from an unexpected source. Is it effective? Will Power be saved in the end? Or is there something going on?

Although the conclusion of this film has been pretty well known for years, I will refrain from explaining what it is. A good mystery should surprise the audience, as this does every audience that sees it for the first time. Laughton and Lancaster make a funny pair (and in the end, an endearing one from Lancaster's point of view). Power gets to play his most sinister part since "the Great Stanton" Carlyle in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. And Dietrich does pull off the biggest surprise twist in her career.

As for Wilder, after some questionable films in the mid 1950s (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS) he was back in form. His handling of the courtroom scenes (which make up nearly 60% of the film) are far more realistic and speedy than Alfred Hitchcock's plodding THE PARADINE CASE a decade earlier. It was the best of the Christie films prior to MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.