Witness to Murder

source: Witness to Murder

"Witness To Murder" is a modest but entertaining thriller with some sensational cinematography and a couple of conspicuously good performances that more than compensate for its rather unremarkable plot. The story doesn't score high on originality or contain many twists but it is, nevertheless, very engaging because it's hard to resist the need to know how the plight of its main protagonist plays out. Some passages are also suspenseful and the climax is tense and exciting. One night, Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) witnesses the murder of a young woman in an apartment on the opposite side of the street to her own. She clearly sees the killer strangling his victim to death and then promptly telephones the police to report what she's seen. When Lieutenant Larry Mathews (Gary Merrill) visits the alleged murder scene, there is no dead body or any evidence of a crime having been committed and so he assumes that Cheryl must have imagined or dreamt the incident. On the following day, Cheryl sees Albert Richter (George Sanders) pushing a large trunk into a station wagon and recognises him as the strangler. Through her own investigations, she discovers that there's a vacant apartment adjacent to Richter's in which he could have hidden the body when the police called and some marks on the floor seem to support this theory, as they indicate that something heavy had recently been dragged from one side of the room to the other. Despite the fact that nobody is convinced by what she says, Cheryl keeps repeating her accusations and whenever she offers some further evidence of Richter's guilt, he cleverly provides a plausible explanation. The longer this goes on, the more convinced the police become that she's irrational and Richter exploits this situation by giving the police some letters (which he claims she wrote) that show that she's mentally ill and clearly intent on persecuting him. The police believe that the letters were written by Cheryl and soon after, have her committed to a mental hospital for observation. The ways in which she navigates her way through this experience and eventually devises a plan to convince the police of Richter's guilt are both intriguing and entertaining to watch. George Sanders is tremendous as the villain of the piece and convincingly slimy as a seemingly sophisticated author who's actually a political fanatic and a callous murderer whose only motive is pure greed. Barbara Stanwyck is also excellent as the remarkably determined Cheryl who continues to persevere despite all the difficulties that she confronts. The way in which Stanwyck portrays Cheryl's mixture of fear and toughness is very well balanced and subtle and adds considerable interest to each new plot development. An unexpected feature of this movie is John Alton's amazing cinematography which does so much to enhance the mood of the piece. The expert way in which light and shadow are used and camera angles are exploited to emphasise certain moments are truly outstanding as well as being aesthetically pleasing.

One of the most implausibly stupid movies I've ever seen. Typical 1950s psychiatric nonsense. Don't waste your time on this tripe.

The story = a nosy suspicious single female neighbor catches a murderer through persistence is old and tired even Woody Allen did a version. So, I offend no one the nosy neighbors are not always female. In this rendition Stanwyk sees a murder out her window. The police investigate and find nothing. The murderer (Sanders) then tries to paint her as crazy--to reduce her credibility to zero. A police detective (Merrill) develops an attachment to Stanwyck and helps out--and of course in the denouement saves Stanwyck. It starts out too abruptly (Stanwyck sees the murder in the first 30 seconds) and becomes so predictable it is hard to believe this was an A film. It has B production values except for maybe some wind effects in the very beginning. The B&W cinematography is good sinister shadows etc... but the story so boringly bad they do nothing and are wasted. You get mad and hope Stanwyck crashes her car or fall off a tall building--all clichéd sequences like a woman strapped to rails in front of a rapidly approaching locomotive. I predicted they would find the book an hour before it happened. There are lots of in your face red herrings--elevators that might stop etc...but no exciting plot twists or turns---a dud. The only good part is when the murderer admits everything to Stanwyck (I wasn't expecting that). Now if Stanwyck had killed herself and the police closed the case that would have made it at least a film noire. Netflix streaming has all the dregs of every genre. DO NOT RECOMMEND

The premise for "Witness to Murder" is very good but the film suffers from one serious problem--the writing. In the movie, the police almost immediately assume that a person who reported a murder is either wrong or crazy. Maybe I am a bit naive, but I really don't believe that the police would be so fast to do this and would take a reported murder A LOT more seriously. However, in the world of this film, they very quickly assume this is the case...too quickly to be realistic. Later, other such stupid assumptions sink the film. "Witness to Murder" begins, not surprisingly, with Barbara Stanwyck looking out her apartment window and seeing a woman being killed in an apartment across from hers. She does what any person would do--contacts the police. And, almost immediately they assume she is wrong! Later in the film one of the cops (Gary Merrill) starts to wonder and actually begins to do his job! But, the smooth killer contacts the idiot police Captain and convinces him that he's being harassed by Stanwyck--and they lock her in the loony bin! I was frustrated by the film--it just assumed something that the film simply didn't establish. Had they had Stanwyck ACT crazy or the police investigated thoroughly THEN they assumed she was wrong it COULD have worked well. Fortunately, the film did get better...for a while. Once Stanwyck was released from the hospital, Sanders actually torments her--telling her that he DID kill the lady but that now no one would believe her! This was great--and I really wanted to see more of this. But, it then gets stupid again when Sanders is in her apartment late in the film and a neighbors SEE this and hears Stanwyck cry for help, they immediately assume she's crazy--even though they have no idea about the investigation and police opinions about Stanwyck's sanity. If a neighbor cried out for help, I sure as heck would have done SOMETHING!!! The bottom line is that the acting is fine--the writing was not. However, it's is a VERY frustrating movie. It could have been good and had a good cast...but ultimately was crap due to wretched writing...just wretched.

I found this movie to be pretty much predictable, and in every way average, despite the star presence of Barbara Stanwyck. She plays a young woman who witnesses a murder (not really giving any spoilers here, given the title) which interestingly happens in the middle of the credit sequence. Predictably, the chauvinist cops try to convince her that she dreamed it, as Sanders gets rid of the body in time to elude their not so thorough search. It gets more interesting as Sanders' character, who turns out to be an ex-Nazi philosopher, starts to send himself letters which are supposed to be from Stanwyck, who he is trying to get locked up in an asylum. The most interesting scene occurs when she confronts him about the letters, and he admits he was the murderer. "Nobody will believe you" he matter of factly tells her, "after all, you're insane." One minute he's debonair and courtly, but about 20 seconds later he's a raving lunatic yelling Hitlerian phrases in German at the top of his voice! Great scene by Sanders, but Stanwyck wasn't given much to do here, struggling through her solo scenes where she has to act out her fear and then her resolve to call her cop boyfriend, or the scenes with her and a bunch of b-actors in the asylum. John Alton's photography, though not particularly original for the genre, was excellent. I do not believe this film should be classified as a film noir, it was basically a suspense film without noir undertones.

I know I'm going against the grain here, because most of the comments have been favourable, but this movie is about as plausible as the Tooth Fairy. I knew from reading the premise that the movie would be predictable, but it was worse than that. OK, I have to admit, I missed the first ten minutes of the program. I came in where the two detectives, (OK, one detective and a Maytag repair man) returned to the apartment of Cheryl Draper, and told her they found nothing. I don't buy it. Police detectives are by their nature and training very suspicious, and make mountains out of molehills. You won't find many detectives willing to dismiss an allegation of murder out of hand. Spoilers follow: The murderer wrote a letter to himself, purportedly from her, in part so that he could get into her apartment and slip the latch. Once in her apartment, he used HER typewriter to write the second letter to himself, which he then mailed to himself. It would be shown to have originated on her typewriter. The thing is, it was not shown that he had an opportunity to write the first letter on her typewriter, so the typefaces would not have matched. That the sanity of Cheryl Draper would be called into question was as predictable as a sunrise. That she would, in the police station, with her sanity questioned, begin to ACT as though she were not quite right in the head was also predictable, with predictable results. If the detective had spent half as much time looking into the case, rather than trying to convince her that she imagined or dreamed it, he might have solved the case sooner. When people are dreaming, they don't realize that they are dreaming, but when they wake up, they do know that it was a dream. BIG spoiler here: The real downer came at the end, when Cheryl was being chased by the crowd, at the head of the pack was the murderer, bent on killing her. What does she do? She runs into a building under construction, and goes up the stairs, where she will ultimately run out of stairs and room to run. She will be trapped, and what a convenient place for the murderer to pitch her off the roof. Right. I think the writer of this Dreck had a bad dream, and should be referred to a pshrink.

This is a very poor way to encounter material that is superficially similar to Rear Window. It's obvious and corny, to suit a 50s audience, yet it still struggles to fill its short 78 minute runtime, after jumping the gun by showing the murder before the credits are even over. And that signature sequence highlights all the movies problems. It's shot cheap: Saunders apartment is seen behind a very poor matte painting of a balcony. The music is overwrought. And the credits embody the low-rent, lurid aesthetic seen throughout. Barbara Stanwyck lives across from the killer, and no one believes her story of witnessing the murder. But luckily the neighborhood detective likes her (as we see in about 6,000 identical scenes) Her character arc is initially interesting, but the writing quickly begins to suck, and we get "She's insane. Put her in the psych ward" nonsense. So there we are in an unpromising psych ward sequence that can go absolutely nowhere. Soon after that, the effete George Saunders reveals that he's German (!) and a Nazi (The characters already know this... ho-hum) and eagerly shares his thoughts on the master race. Gee, thank god the villain is so over the top. Finally the whole thing collapses as Stanwyck falls into Saunders clutches. She runs away, and he holds back for no better reason than if he didn't, he'd catch her in about 10 seconds, and the movie would be deprived of its absurd, construction-site, tower-climbing, King-Kong finale. It is written in the big book of clichés: all bad guys must fall to their deaths, no more than 60 seconds before the credits roll. So there Stanwyck goes, up the tower, the least sensible place to escape from a villain, clomping up countless stairways in a pair of gigantic, loud pumps that would reveal her location to anyone within quarter of a mile ...you just roll your eyes, thinking, "Yeah... you'd make it about 20 feet in those shoes." 'Witness to Murder' can barely muster button-pushing. Nothing happens beyond the catalog of bad answers/motives provided on screen. It lacks any trace of ambition to add to film discourse. Refinement is absent and a viewer with a mind can bring nothing to the experience. It's greatest hope is that viewers will respond to rather artless, sensationalistic stimuli. It plays like a debilitated version of noir. (It qualifies - There are maybe 5 nice Noir compositions). But at least half the movie is shot in standard "women's picture" middle grays. It's bad, but at least it's so absurd it made me laugh now and then. The Maytag repairman plays the detective's cohort. In a bizarre coincidence, Raymond Burr is in this, AND Rear Window.

I was surprised to come upon this film "Witness to Murder" tonight on TV as I hadn't heard of it before - always nice to discover an old movie with excellent, familiar actors. I get the impression of it being a part of the transitional period for some actors from movies to early TV dramas, in live productions that carry such realism as this film does. I tuned in late and missed the first few minutes of the movie where wily Albert Richter (George Sanders) is purported to have committed his evil deed; unfortunately Sanders has always been one of my favourite actors, one of the best ne'er-do-wells (as in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Samson and Delilah, and All About Eve), and I wasn't a little old lady in those days but a budding teenager. His suave demeanour always fascinated me and he carries this over from film to film. By the way, in this 1954 movie his few lines in German weren't very convincing but his villainous role is very well set forth. It's obvious that Barbara Stanwyck as the frustrated witness, Cheryl, carries a huge emotional burden throughout, and does it well - a real pro! This is a moderately predictable melodrama when crime inspection was more simple somehow. The music is very prevalent in most scenes and seems to override everything at times especially near the climax but that's to be expected. Good popcorn fare! Enjoy some reminiscing moments of 'film noire' in top form.

Barbara Stanwyck sees a murder through her window, the problem is no one will believe her. George Sanders plays an author with a twisted mind who taunts Stanwyck through out the film. A little predictable but never the less enjoyable to watch.