Order in the Gab!

Wise: Hi there, Werth.  Why the glum face?

Werth: Oh, hello, Wise.  I've been doing jury duty all week and I'm bored, bored, bored.

Wise: Aren't you excited by fulfilling your civic duty?

Werth: I'd only be excited by my civic duty if it involved Christopher Meloni and the patented Dick Wolf sting.

 

Wise: Come on, Werth.  It's your chance to participate in the wheels of justice.  And, of course, it's the perfect opportunity to salute the pleasures of cinematic courtroom drama, like Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957).  Adapted from Agatha Christie's West End hit dramatization of her own short story, Witness stars Charles Laughton as Sir Wilfrid Robarts, a brilliant English barrister just returned from a months-long stay in the hospital after a heart attack.  

Famous for his unconventional tactics, Sir Wilfrid cannot resist—despite the strenuous objections of his nurse Miss Plimsoll (Laughton's real-life wife Elsa Lanchester)—when an intriguing case falls into his lap.

Werth: Thinking of Elsa and Charles together in flagrante makes me want to object.

Wise: Hapless veteran Leonard Vole (a very sweaty Tyrone Power) stands accused of murdering a rich spinster who had just made him the beneficiary of her will.  His only alibi in the face of mounting circumstantial evidence is the testimony of his frigid German wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich).  

Recognizing that Christine's chilly demeanor will only stymie his defense, Sir Wilfrid instead pokes holes in the prosecutor's theories and seems close to winning until Christine is called to testify against her husband.  At the last minute, a mysterious phone call leads to evidence securing Leonard's exoneration, but it also raises Sir Wilfred's suspicions, culminating in a series of shocking reversals that theater owners warned viewers not to reveal.

Werth: The only mysterious phone call in my jury session was some old lady's marimba ringtone.

Wise: Part of Christie's genius is her ability to indulge in stereotypes as well as subvert them: Sir Wilfrid is both a blustering fool and a canny defender; Christine is both heartless and undone by her emotions.  Wilder capitalizes on this by heightening both the drama and the campy-ness—even creating the role of the nurse to take advantage of Lanchester's chemistry with Laughton—making Witness probably the best film version of any Christie property.

Werth: Even better than Murder on the Orient Express?
 

Wise: Yes, because I think Witness really captures Christie's sense of humor.  Her books feature some brutal crimes, but they're leavened by a certain tongue in cheek quality that the plummier adaptations of her work miss.  For all its pleasures, Orient Express overindulges in nostalgia for 1930's Deco Britain, and misses the point (that Wilder so brilliantly captures) that Dame Agatha's idealized England is the conveyance for murderous hijinks and not the destination itself.
 

Werth: If you're in the mood for hijinks, no courtroom has more of them than the Tracy-Hepburn classic, Adam's Rib (1949). Adam (Tracy) and Amanda (Hepburn) are married lawyers who find themselves on the opposite sides of the table at an attempted murder trial. Adam wants to throw the book at ditzy, would-be murderess Doris Attinger (a sparkling Judy Holliday), but Amanda defends her, turning the trial into a crusade for women's equality.

Wise: I love when homicide transforms into urbane wit. 

Werth: Written by married screenscribes Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, Adam's Rib mines the seemingly endless gold that the Tracy-Hepburn screen-teaming produced.Tracy is gruff and charming as a somewhat old-fashioned man who loves and respects his wife—but believes that the law is the law. Hepburn is regal in her defense of womanhood, but at the same time a giddy woman in love with her man. 

The courtroom moves into the bedroom and vice versa as the two butt heads and soon these two legal eagle love birds are pecking each other's eyes out. The famous massage scene culminates with the heinie smack heard around the world.

Wise: The happy ending joke writes itself.

Werth: By the end we are less worried about who wins the case and more about how these two people who are made for each other will find their way back to a happy marriage. Tracy and Hepburn were so good at these battle of the sexes flicks because they gave their comedy a serious side. 

If he was just a sexist pig and she an overheated women's libber, these movies would never work. But these two actors were so skilled at working their love and respect for each other into their characters that Adam and Amanda feel more full and real—making us see both sides and wanting to find a way for both of them to be right. 

Director George Cukor also wisely enlisted the comic abilities of Holliday and fey-neighbor extraordinaire David Wayne to heighten the level of comedy in the picture without making Tracy and Hepburn shoulder all the humor. Many feel Adam's Rib is the best display of the Tracy and Hepburn magic, and this juror is happy to find in their favor.

Wise: So did your jury service end with you hooking up with Cher like Dennis Quaid did in Suspect (1987)?

Werth: Only the jury box knows for sure. Tune in next week for more legal shenanigans from Film Gab!

Next Stop- Movies!

Wise: Hi Werth!

Werth: Hi Wise! How was your Thanksgiving?  

Wise: Oh, you know how all family holidays are.  Kind of like a turkey, stuffed with a lot of crazy, but still delicious.  How about you? 

Werth: It was great.  I went to the country for a big dinner with friends, and aside from the weight gain, it was pretty fantastic.  For the first time I took a train back into the city, and it really inspired me.   Trains have a romance, a mystery, and they make a great setting for all kinds of events.  

Wise: Do I hear a transition coming down the tracks?  

Werth: All aboard!  

Wise: I ride the train any chance I get.  Both my parents worked for the railroad, both my grandfathers did, and so did one of my great-grandfathers.  I was bred to believe it’s the greatest way to travel.  

Werth: But more than that, trains are full of strangers and stories, coincidences and chance encounters, and there’s this sense of movement- but also of being trapped.  Lots of great film makers have used trains as a setting for their movies, taking advantage of all the possibilities offered by traveling by rail.  One of the most famous being—

Wise: Murder on the Orient Express?  

Werth: Yes, but- 

Wise: Strangers on a Train?  

Werth: Well, yes, but -  

Wise: Silver Streak?  

Werth: The movie I had in mind was Shanghai Express.

Wise: Not Shanghai Surprise?

Werth: If you wanted to talk about Shanghai Surprise, you should have done it in your Madonna post last week. Shanghai Express is the 1932 Marlene Dietrich/Josef von Sternberg thriller-romance classic.

Wise: Thrills AND romance! Tell me more!

Werth: The film takes place in 1930’s China by way of the Paramount lot. Dietrich is Shanghai Lily, a glorified lady of the night-

Wise: You mean a hooker.

Werth: As Lily says, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” Stiff Clive Brook plays a doctor who boards the train to Shanghai and realizes that this much buzzed about Jezebel is his old girlfriend.

Wise: He didn’t know how good he had it.

Werth: Exactly. And like every dumb guy, he wants her to go back to being sweet and demure. Big laugh. So the train takes off across China and before you know it, poor Shanghai’s being accosted by the moral brigade and Chinese rebels led by the nefarious Henry Chang, played by everybody’s favorite white actor who made a living playing Asians, Warner Oland.

Wise: Ah so.

Werth: What really makes this movie unique is the sheer beauty of the filming. Von Sternberg was at the peak of his abilities in shading and light diffusion. The shots are stunning constructions of shadow and light. And nobody ever photographed Dietrich as well. Every shot of her in this film could be hung on the wall as a work of art. This movie is evidence of the beauty and power Dietrich’s face had on the big screen. There is no doubt after looking at her, that she is a great star, even if her acting could sometimes come off as insincere and a little hammy.

Wise: Mmmmm…. German ham.

Werth: Shanghai Express also features the sadly forgotten Asian film star Anna Mae Wong. In her day, she was one of the most beautiful women in film, but because she was Asian, she was never allowed to play starring roles of much consequence.

Wise: Another victim of Hollywood racism?

Werth: And anti-miscegenation laws. She lost the lead in 1937’s The Good Earth because uber-Caucasian Paul Muni was cast as the male lead, and an Asian (even if she was born in Los Angeles) couldn’t kiss a white man on screen… even if he was made-up to look like Charlie Chan.

Wise: Terrible.

Werth: She couldn’t work here in the States (especially after Pearl Harbor), and the Chinese disliked her cause they didn’t approve of the Asian stereotype she portrayed in Hollywood films, so she couldn’t work there. She died of a heart attack and cirrhosis of the liver at age 56 after a long battle with the bottle.

Wise: Way to end on an up note.

Werth: But watching Dietrich and Wong in Shanghai Express IS an up note. They are utterly mesmerizing. This movie proves how black and white film was the perfect medium for exotic, more-captivating-than-life beauty. I’d take Amtrak more often if I could sit in a smoky car with gals like that. So how about you, Wise?  What’s your train movie? 

Wise: I’m thinking of The Clock, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Judy Garland.  

Werth: Does it take place on a train?  

Wise: No, but they ride the subway and they meet cute in the old Pennsylvania Station where Judy as a harried secretary trips over Robert Walker’s duffel bag and breaks the heel of her shoe.  Walker, playing a good natured mid-westerner on 48-hour leave from the army, offers to help, and after a series of misadventures in New York City, they are separated only to realize that they have fallen in love.  After a desperate search, they reunite in the same spot they met in Penn Station, and from there, it’s a series of frantic adventures though the convolutions of New York red tape until they finally get married at City Hall.  

Werth: And none of it takes place on a train?  

Wise: But the central location is Penn Station.  

Werth: A station is not a train.  

Wise: True, but what’s so great about this movie is how well it uses the same kinds of themes that train movies do.  People in transition, the pleasures of serendipity, even the idea of traveling inexorably to your destination.  Plus all the foamers—

Werth: Foamers?  

Wise: It’s what the rail fans call themselves.  They tend to foam at the mouth whenever they see a train or tracks or trestle bridges or tunnels or dining car silver or ticket stubs or timetables.  

Werth: I’m foaming right now.  

 

Wise: Central to train fandom is the devastating loss of the original Penn Station which is supposed to have put the magnificence of Grand Central to shame.  The scenic artists at MGM did an amazing job re-creating it. The whole movie was filmed on sound stages, but even so, The Clock captures the energy and feel of New York City better than many movies that are actually filmed here.  Minnelli had a great sense of the rhythms of the city, and the movie reflects that.  It’s full of quirky characters, the overwhelming bustle of rush hour, even the lazy, lonely quality the city takes on when the crowd starts to recede.  

Plus Judy is fantastic in her first non-signing role, full of tenderness, gumption, smarts.  It makes me wish she had the chance to make more dramas and maybe fewer of the more cockamamie musicals on her resume.  

Werth: I guess someone doesn’t love The Harvey Girls even though part of it takes place on an actual train.  

Wise: I could find out if Shanghai Surprise has a train in it… 

Werth: Alright, I’ll leave you alone. 

Wise: Tune in next week when Film Gab with Werth and Wise will punch your ticket for more classic films.