The film is like a lot of play-to-movie adaptations, talky and now dated; we're so familiar with courtroom procedural drama now that the trial, set in the famous Old Bailey London courtroom, seems improbable.
Tyrone Power was in his 40's when he made this film; his last - he died of a heart attack soon after. It's poignant to see this performance. In this film, he looks sleazy and unhealthy. His face is fleshy and carved with lines, and his presence is disturbing. Is he a whimsical charmer or a clever and evil criminal?
Charles Laughton is the perfect curmudgeon, blustering and yet poignant, as the lawyer who defends Power at the risk of his own health. He's a kind of caricatured Churchillian Brit.
Marlene Dietrich plays the truly clever yet unsympathetic wife who schemes to testify to prevent her lover-husband from conviction for murdering a rich widow. Her face is glowing, iconic, and polished, her eyes seem all-knowing in her Germanic iciness.
It's Billy Wilder, but I find it off; Agatha Christie's powerful writing and plotting really muffle and dilute the themes that haunt me after seeing a great Wilder film. It's the fully complex ambiguous characters that are best about the film. The war has drained any moral blood left in them, and it's shadow is long. It's up the Brits to restore a lawful world, not the old central European nexus.
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