For the Defense

In their second of 6 screen-team efforts, William Powell and Kay Francis excel in this courtroom melodrama. Controversial lawyer Powell receives a quasi-marriage proposal from actress girlfriend Francis. "After all these months, don't you think that would be rather silly?" he replies. Francis, disappointed, decides to rendevouz with a boozer pal (Scott Kolk),she has been keeping on the side in case her "Powell affair" fizzled. With Kay at the wheel, Kolk pawing her in a drunken haze -- she hits and kills a roadside bystander. Francis begs Powell to defend Kolk who is taking the rap for her. Kolk gets off the hook and Powell learns about his liason with Francis. I won't give away the ending, but Francis must have been grateful for finally having a role at Paramount that was rather substantial and chock full of emotional complexities. FOR THE DEFENSE was her 10th film at the studio and they seldom built up her parts. This was her 2nd of 5 films with director John Cromwell.

"For the Defense," from 1930, is loosely based on the career of William Fallon, who never met a client he couldn't convince a jury was not guilty.

William Powell plays William Foster, whose specialty is challenging cases, defending some real low-life characters. He always manages to have them found not guilty, and he doesn't rely on any unethical practices to do it.

Foster is seeing Irene Manners, a glamorous dancer (Kay Francis), who wants to get married. Foster, it seems, has some problems with commitment.

Irene has another man, Jack Dafoe (Scott Kolk) who is interested in her and wants to marry her. However, she wants to wait until she can explain the situation to Bill, whom she truly loves.

One night, Jack talks her into going for a drive with him. He's plastered, so she drives. The two are arguing when Irene hits a man in the street, who dies.

Jack sobers up quickly and tells her to hide. He takes the rap. She in turn begs Bill to defend him. Bill is jealous of Jack and doesn't want to take the case, but when Irene swears there is nothing between them, he accepts.

During court, the prosecutor questions Jack and asks if a woman was with him, which he denies. The prosecutor then tries to submit a ring of Irene's, found in the car, as evidence. When Foster sees it, he knows Irene was lying.

Good movie directed by John Cromwell, which moves quickly and has a wonderful performance from Powell and a good one by Francis. They made a great team. Powell could do drama and comedy with equal facility. You'll see none of the lighthearted Thin Man here.

Certainly worth a look. It doesn't have any of what made pre-code different - this could have been made after the code - but it's still good.

Before he was associated with Myrna Loy over at MGM, during his Paramount years William Powell was teamed with Kay Francis for several films in the early sound era. For The Defense was one of them and it holds up very well today.

According to the Citadel Film series book on his films, Powell's character is based on criminal attorney William Fallon who numbered Arnold Rothstein among his clients. Fallon was a Perry Mason type who worked on the dark side and Powell is just that in this film.

Powell is courting actress Kay Francis, but he makes it abundantly clear he's not the marrying kind. So Francis starts seeing young Scott Kelk and while driving him home she hits a man with her car and kills him. Kelk takes the wrap and wouldn't you know it, Powell becomes his defense attorney. That sets in motion a whole series of consequences for all involved.

Powell whom I've mentioned in other reviews apparently instinctively knew how to handle sound from the beginning of the talkies. He has wonderful chemistry with Kay Francis on this and other collaborations.

Some other people to take note of are James Finlayson the great nemesis of Laurel&Hardy playing a bribed juror. Also William B. Davidson as the District Attorney who does something that Hamilton Burger never got to do with Perry Mason. Finally Thomas Jackson who the following year would play the same kind of dogged police detective in Little Caesar.

For The Defense is a great example of William Powell's smooth playing before his glory years at MGM. A definite must for his legion of fans.

But, for that matter, what movie did William Powell and Kay Francis team up in that wasn't a fine example of movie-making? William Powell plays William Foster, a flamboyant and successful defense lawyer that reminds me of Powell's Thin Man character except, unlike Nick Charles, William Foster is an unhappy man at his core. He gets drunk and pretty much stays that way to soothe this unnamed pain, not to add to the edge of a giddily happy life. His long-time lover, Irene Manners (Kay Francis), is the one thing he claims he can depend upon, but whenever he says this you get the feeling that he counts not even on that. Marriage is out of the question from Foster's standpoint, but Kay wants matrimony and finds someone who offers it in a less interesting package than Foster in the person of wealthy Jack Defoe. Jack and Irene meet late one night and take a ride in Jack's car to talk things out about the future - Irene is still unsure about how she wants to proceed. Irene is driving because Jack had been drinking. When Jack gets fresh, he causes the car to swerve and Irene hits a pedestrian. Jack sobers up quickly at this point and tells Irene to run away so he can claim responsibility for the wreck alone as he fears for Irene's reputation whether she is named as the driver or just a passenger. Unfortunately for Jack the pedestrian is dead. Also unfortunately for Jack, he still has the smell of alcohol on his breath when the police arrive.

Now Jack is up for manslaughter. Foster has never liked Defoe because he considers him a spoiled brat, and now Irene is begging Foster to defend Defoe in spite of that, all the time trying to keep from Foster the fact that she was with Jack that night and that they were talking marriage. Defoe is maintaining the same charade as Irene. Meanwhile the district attorney and the police have had just about enough of Foster winning every case he takes and are keeping a close eye on his business practices. Who will go to jail? Will anybody go to jail? Watch and find out.

William Powell and Kay Francis were always great together because they usually played less than perfect people that made the perfect couple. Regardless of how things worked out for them at the end of their films, you just felt their characters were soul mates. This film is a great showcase of their talents when they were at the peak of their popularity in the 30's.

I love this period in film. I'm particularly attracted to the detective genre because it had a significant role in shaping how movies work.

A key personality in this, especially in the pre-code period, was the free-spirited fellow. Later he would be a tough guy, but in this era he was more likely to be interested in sex and partying. The actor that works best in this is William Powell, who happened to be working at a time when the industry was full of experiments. Rather than work hard on making a film perfect, they just rattled off this guess and that, try to see what worked. Unlike today, what worked was a moving target as the vocabulary and viewers matured.

This is such an experiment. Here the "detective" is a brash lawyer. The job changes slightly but the tweaking of the police and the DA is as with most from this period. Also constant was the notion that the key character could control the world around him to some extent. In this case, the lawyer pays a particularly high price, but is able to twist the story precisely as he would wish.

By itself, its uninteresting. In the context of hundreds of other movies that deal with what would become noir mechanics, it matters. And because it is in that period where honesty about sex was allowed, it has an edge.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.