Mary

If you only speak German, you should watch this version. If you speak English, you should just watch Alfred Hitchcock's film Murder! (1930) because it's exact same movie, using the exact same sets and plot, just with different actors.

It is late night when the dwellers of a street hear a scream in the apartment of the actress Mary Baring (Olga Tschechowa). A police officer arrives, and the neighbors see Mary dazed and confused, with blood on her clothes and on a poker, and the body of her colleague Ellen Moore on the floor. An empty bottle of brandy is on the table and Mary is in shock with no recollection of what happened. The drunken Mr. Moore says that Mary and Ellen were rivals in the theater and the police take Mary to the precinct. There is a trial, and the jurors believe Mary is guilty, but the famous actor Sir John Menier (Alfred Abel) believes she is not guilty. However, he is not able to change the position of the other jurors and is forced to change his vote to guilty. Mary is sentenced to the gallows, but Sir John decides to conduct his own investigation to prove that Mary is innocent.

"Mary" (1931) is a German spoken remake of "Murder!" (1930) that was shot simultaneously on the same sets of "Murder!" by Alfred Hitchcock with a German-speaking cast. The plot is interesting, about a murder and the woman accused and considered guilty by the jurors. There is one moment, when Sir John Menier exposes his opinion, that seems to be the inspiration to "12 Angry Men" (1957) when only one juror disagrees from the others. The real killer is a weird guy, wearing a dress to perform at the circus. After watching "Mary", I have finally finished to see or see again all the Alfred Hitchcock features and written a review in IMDb for each one. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Mary"

For all practical purposes, a remake, in German, of "Murder!" It is stark and frantic, but the plot is the same. The editing is flawed and so things do not move fluidly. Also, the actors seem more stiff and less interesting. It's as if Hitchcock felt he could give the German people a gift, but move on quickly. I agree that the tension is much less. The final scene is one of the most dramatic of any the master produced, but here it doesn't have quite the same impact. See it only if you wish to have a full view of early Hitchcock films. That was my motivation.

Is it merely a German version of Hitchcock's "Murder!"? True both films are based on the same source-material. Yet the outcome is different. There is more emphasis on choice of camera and shots and editing in the German film than in the British one. The underlying cross dressing and gay aspects are more obvious in the German film. Yes "Mary'' can be considerably compared to Lumet's "12 Angry Men" made decades later. Here the juror becomes the detective, while in Lumet's film the juror never really leaves the jury room. The relationship between juror and the accused is explored midway--a rare aspect in any jury-oriented tale. It is therefore goes one up on "Murder!" Further, Alfred Abel (a German actor) is superior to Herbert Marshall both playing the same character of the same tale, that of Sir John Menier. So is Olga Tschechowa playing the role of the accused actress, facing death sentence.

This is the only time in Alfred Hitchcock's career that he remade one of his own films in another language; just like in "Murder" (1930), there is one piece of brilliant filmmaking (the entire jury sequence), but the rest of the film is dull, primitive and plodding - strictly for Hitchcock completists. Mary (Olga Tschechowa) is very beautiful. ** out of 4.