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Retrospective

Witness for the Prosecution

FromBilly Wilder

WithTyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, John Williams

Year1957

Duration116min.

LanguageEnglish

London, post-war period. Despite suffering from heart disease, elderly criminal barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts takes on one last case: Leonard Vole, charming and enigmatic, is accused of murdering a wealthy widow. But the real explosive force lies in his cool, contradictory wife Christine. Wilder transforms Agatha Christie's stage play (which in turn is based on her 1925 short story ‘Traitor's Hands’) into a complex and comical game of mirrors and roles, in which every truth needs a stage and every stage becomes a trap. Not purely a crime thriller, but a study of belief, evidence and the desire to perform – in court as in life. When the masks finally come off, the feeling remains that cinema itself is the greatest witness to deception.
(Florian Widegger)