The Trial of Vivienne Ware

Hang on to your hats gang, this one moves real fast. More interesting than great moving making. But fun with lots of familiar faces to 30's movie geeks (like me). Check out lovely Joan Bennett in her blonde phase. Maude Eburne, Herbert Mundin and Christian Rub show up with their usual memorable roles. Skeets Gallagher and Zasu Pitts add zip as over the top radio hosts covering the trial. And Lilian Bond crushes as the "other woman". One bad note: Cook and Dinehart as the attorneys scream at witnesses and each other and the judge non-stop. I found it very annoying. Predictable and a little creaky but still well worth a watch IMHO.

William K. Howard was given the task of turning a popular radio serial into a movie, and succeeded. A carefully-written script that actually paid attention to the way cases are tried was the first step. Some great support, particularly Skeets Gallegher and the always fascinating Zasu Pitts helps. A restless camera helps keep up speed, and some interesting sets -- particularly the nightclub set -- make this a fine movie, even if the leads, who became lovers more than twenty years later, had no memory of working together on this one.

I wish to call your attention, if you ever have the chance to see this movie -- it is very rare and the one print I saw was a 16 mm. print, blurry as you would expect -- to the swish cuts. A swish cut is when the camera starts to pan away, then the illusion of high speed movement starts and when the camera slows down it is panning into a new shot -- maybe a quarter second elapses. It adds tremendous excitement to a sequence and Howard uses a lot of them here.

Unhappily, a lot of editing techniques for shot changes were on their ways out. By about 1935, Hollywood had settled on the now-standard techniques, except for a few movies which attempt to evoke the older movies. A loss to film grammar, but what can we do about it now, except to enjoy these techniques when we see them?

May 20 2010: I just noticed a modern use of the swish cut: any Doctor Who fan out there should take a look at Season 5 Episode 4 for the use of one, four minutes into the proceedings.

Fox really has some gems rotting away in its vaults and this is one of them. Vivienne Ware clocks in at just under an hour but is full of thrills. The movie starts out like one of the Thin Man movies would - you have a really bad guy that has no shortage of enemies. In this case the bad guy is slimy Damon Fenwick who believably has attracted the fascination and not so believably the love of wealthy socialite Vivienne Ware (Joan Bennett), to whom he has become engaged. Everybody has a reason to hate this guy - there's attorney John Sutherland (Donald Cook) who is a good guy in love with Vivienne, there's Damon's chorus girl ex-mistress Delores Devine (Lillian Bond) that he threw over for Vivienne, there's club owner Angelo Peroni who keeps shooting Delores and Damon mysterious dirty looks, and finally Vivienne herself when she finds Damon at breakfast with Delores and thus finds out Delores is not such an ex after all.

It's no surprise therefore when Damon turns up dead. The police come knocking at the door of Vivienne in the middle of the night who seems to be packing everything she owns for a long journey - not good if you're a suspect in a murder, which she is. She has a remarkable lack of explanations and alibis, and so she is put on trial for her life with ever loyal John as her attorney. Perennial bad guy over at Warner Bros. Alan Dinehart plays the enthusiastic prosecuting attorney. For comic relief there is Skeets Gallagher as dramatic crime report Graham McNally making radio broadcasts as the trial is in session and he is a real hoot reporting alongside Zasu Pitts as gossip reporter Gladys Fairweather. Graham is charming before the audience, but always has an insult for the long-suffering Gladys every time she takes over the microphone. Full of twists and turns, precode situations and one-liners, I heartily recommend this one.

This was shown at MOMA, New York City, 11/15, on a restored print. The print was gorgeous, probably as good as you can restore a print of a movie almost 85 years old. Had never seen it before and thought it must have value as a milestone of some sort in filmmaking. After all, the Museum of Modern Art is pretty fast company.

Alas, it's just an old picture that breaks no new ground and struck me as dated, and the only strong point was the vintage cast and the atavistic feel of a creaky oldtime movie. As the title states, it's about the murder trial of a woman who we know from the start is innocent. We also suspect the identity of the murderer and the predictable outcome. Along the way, we get a fascinating look at the media attention the trial attracts, as a radio station sets up a temporary studio in a room adjacent to the courtroom. Here we find 'Skeets' Gallagher and Zasu Pitts as trial reporters and serving as comic relief as well. Everyone dressed to the nines, as was evidently the custom in the 30's, and for those of us too young to know or remember, the two opposing lawyers haranguing the witnesses in loud, penetrating voices.

It was fun to watch some of the old-time character actors, and especially to see Joan Bennett as a platinum blonde. Donald Cook was the love interest, and with his customary dour expression. Also on hand were Alan Dinehart, Maude Eburne and Noel Madison who were recognizable to 30's audiences but forgotten today. In sum, I would rather have watched it on TV as the trip to NYC wasn't worth it.

It's only a hour long but what a long tedious hour! I can't think of any reason to watch this other than to gain an insight into what passed as light entertainment in the early thirties. Radio dramas were massive back then and this is essentially a radio drama with visual aids. To a 21st century audience however this is neither entertaining, interesting or fun.

OK, viewed purely academically, there is an interesting style to this. It's filmed to that same a frenetic fast pace which was typical of those old radio dramas but I'm not sure that style works in a motion picture. It looks quite good; there's a lot of nice fluid camera movement, rapid editing and very short scenes spliced together with interesting 'swish cuts' which add to the sense of speed director William Howard was trying to achieve. The acting is adequate but because it's all so fast and the characters aren't fully developed people, you can't really tell. You don't get to know the characters, there's no depth or development to any of them, they're just parts of the silly story.