Review: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Dana
Andrews plays a novelist engaged to Joan Fontaine. One day he witnesses a
public execution with Fontaine’s left-wing, anti-capital punishment newspaper
man father (Sidney Blackmer) about the wrongs of capital punishment. Blackmer
comes up with a cockamamie idea for Andrews (looking for inspiration for a
book) to incriminate himself to such a degree that he gets arrested for a
recent murder, and set to be executed. The idea will be that Blackmer will
arrive just in time with all of the plans that prove that he is innocent and
that it was just a stunt to prove that an innocent man can be executed (That
they could get arrested for dicking around with the law never seems to enter
into their, or the filmmaker’s heads). In order for this to work, Fontaine must
be kept in the dark, because she’s a silly bobble-headed girl who can’t be
trusted to keep a story straight, right? So, Andrews agrees for some
godforsaken reason to be the ‘guilty’ party and away we go. Complications come
via a freak accident that will make it very difficult for Andrews to prove his
innocence. Whoops. Philip Bourneuf plays the aggressive DA, Edward Binns plays
a cop, and Barbara Nichols plays a floozy ‘dancer’ who knew the deceased, a
co-worker.
The
last American film from director Fritz Lang (“Metropolis”, “Ministry
of Fear”, “Clash By Night”, “The Big Heat”) is sadly not a
good one. This 1956 twisty courtroom thriller/social message film plays like
something Alfred Hitchcock would’ve thought up…and given up on because he
couldn’t think of a way to make it work. Lang and screenwriter Douglas Morrow (“The
Stratton Story”, “Jim Thorpe- All American”) have pushed on either undeterred
or unaware of the problems. If you’ve seen “The Life of David Gale”,
it’s quite a similar film, but not as good (and that film was no masterpiece).
This
is the kind of film where a newspaper man played by Sidney Blackmer will claim
in earnest that a newspaper can’t take sides. Really? ‘Coz I can think of at
least one paper in Australia that calls bullshit on that, buddy. Unlike “David
Gale”, I never felt Dana Andrews was committed enough to the cause to go
along with this, and it’s only partly due to Andrews’ unpersuasive performance.
In fact, almost no one in this film acts with any sense of urgency or interest.
Hell, everything is subpar here- acting, script, direction. It’s all
underwhelming. And incredibly preachy. Boringly preachy, actually, with Andrews
looking deathly bored, and the talented Sidney Blackmer choking on his
pretentious dialogue. After quite a ballsy opening scene of an execution, we
get an awfully dry and inorganic post-electrocution discussion between
Blackmer, Andrews, and the pro-death penalty DA (Philip Bourneuf) that stops
the film dead.
Also
hampering the film is the rather unconvincing performance by a thanklessly cast
Joan Fontaine. An 11th hour twist is a pleasant surprise and helps
nix a few concerns I had with the logic of the whole thing (I’d rather not
delve into spoilers, to be honest, but you’ll have the same concerns believe
me), but not nearly all of my concerns. Still, along with a fun performance by
Barbara Nichols, the twist is the best thing.
The
whole thing is just dated and unconvincing, it feels not like a B-picture, but
a C-picture, and I’ve always held Lang a lot higher in esteem than that. It
doesn’t even look memorable, which is
quite disappointing for a Lang picture. What the hell went wrong here? It just
doesn’t come off, and the fact that it was written by a law school graduate (!)
almost makes your brain explode.
Rating:
C
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