Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Edit: in this article i say that there was a Chinese dub; i have been informed that in fact there is not, and the fact that the cinema was advertising both english and chinese versions is a quirk of the ticket platform rather than a true indication of there being both an english and a chinese version.

I could not say why this film is currently being screened in Chinese cinemas; i’m guessing it only recently got dubbed. I went to see it with the original audio. In general i think that was the right decision, because there is a lot of subtle humour throughout which did not always translate in the subtitles, but i also partly wish i’d watched the chinese dub because i want to know what accent the cockney woman has.

The plot was not new to me, as i had previously read Agatha Christie’s original short story, and also watched the excellent two-part bbc adaptation. This was my first time seeing it as a film. Although i remembered the key points of the plot, my memory was hazy on the details and there were various aspects which differed from what i could recall. In practice, that wasn’t a big issue.

The acting was in general very good. Marlene Dietrich in particular was excellent as a cold-hearted manipulator. The rest of the cast did a good job, although sometimes the acting skewed towards over-the-top, but never so much that it brought the film down.

The strongest aspect is definitely the writing. I found myself laughing at lots of little jokes all the way through. The majority of them were clearly meant as jokes, and generally the humour was extremely british, but there were also a few moments that i would guess were not originally meant as jokes, but seem funny now that almost seventy years have passed, social norms have changed, and the country is slowly becoming a toxic cesspit.

Writing that also just absolutely shocks me; this film is sixty eight years old! It’s absolutely wild to me that we can watch a film from so long ago, based on a book written twenty years before that. Time is amazing, and so is the medium of film.

Speaking of, there was not anything spectacular about the cinematography of this one, but i don’t think there needed to be. The setting is pretty vanilla, although the sets were all clearly designed with a lot of care. Most of the film’s character came from the writing and the acting.

The primary downside was the way that Sir Wilfrid verbally abuses Nurse Plimsoll throughout; Wilfrid is generally a likeable character but his constant casual sexism gives him an unpleasant aftertaste.

If you like old black and white courtroom dramas or Agatha Christie, this is a worthy film.