A Fúria dos Justos

Pretty good drama featuring a reluctant lawyer roped into a murder trial. As usual Ford does a credible job as the harried attorney who strives to see his client gets a fair shake. To do this he must alienate many of the town's leading citizens who are, of course, looking out for #1. Worth seeing.

Trial is one of the best films of the Fifties and a personal favorite of mine in the credits of a favorite actor of mine, Glenn Ford. Made at the end of what is loosely described as the 'McCarthy Era', Trial bravely tackles the evils of right and leftwing extremism and shows that people of good will can make a difference in defeating them. It's a subject I'm surprised Frank Capra didn't consider as a project.

Communist attorney Arthur Kennedy has latched on to a case involving the death of a teenage caucasian girl in which a young Mexican boy stands accused of her murder. In fact we see the events as they transpire at the beginning of the film. The boy, very winningly played by Rafael Campos has some very dubious culpability in the matter.

But in this California town, prejudice against Mexican-Americans runs pretty high. Rafael is arrested and the Communist party looks to jump in. For window dressing they latch on to law professor Glenn Ford who agrees to go to court with the young man, partly to prove the falsity of that old adage about those who can't, teach.

Ford does pretty good for a while, but Kennedy who's more interested in a martyr and the stirring up of race prejudice, gets the mother played by Katy Jurado to have Rafael take the stand. District Attorney John Hodiak in a devastating cross examination blows the defense wide open.

Arthur Kennedy's bravura performance as Communist attorney Barney Castle won him an Oscar nomination, but he lost out to Jack Lemmon for Mister Roberts. But my personal favorite in this film is the Judge played with strength and dignity by Juano Hernandez. Judge Hernandez shows as Shakespeare put it that the quality of mercy is indeed not strained.

I can't think of another film in that time that showed some of the problems that scar America's soul, but also show that the cure offered might indeed be worse.

Unseen is a state investigating committee against subversives where Ford's been subpoened to appear. That's not modeled after McCarthy, the reference is to a California State Senator named Jack Tenney who in that era attempted to be a state version of McCarthy. And like McCarthy generated a lot of heat, but very little light.

Glenn and the cast can be very proud of the work they did on this film.

A 50's movie which challenges extremism at many levels. Bigotry, police corruption, mob mentality and communist subversion all are taken to task in this movie. A young Hispanic boy is accused of murdering a young white girl. Glen Ford, a law academic with no practical experience takes the case to learn what it is like to handle a real case rather than one from a text book. He is an incredible teacher, but will he be as good in the real world.

Throughout the story see then towns people wanting to hang the boy, the subversion of a communist sympathizer who uses the young man and his mother to further his cause, corrupt police, real-estate hungry bigots and more.

Truth win out in the end. However, Fords character is challenged by the trial judge, brilliantly played by Juana Hernandez, and his own bigotry (Sydney Portier does the same to Ford in "The Blackboard Jungle".

Over all a good movie set in the cold war era. It is a film where consensus is fought for and truth prevails.

This film fascinates precisely BECAUSE of its confused treatment of the theme of bigotry. It does not only refer, under a thin disguise of name, to Senator McCarthy - but also to the Ku Klux Klan. To me, its chief value is that it illustrates rather startlingly the ethical strangeness of a mid-fifties America apparently seeking a definition of justice while still beset with considerable self-doubt concerning its own institutions.

Few films of the period make so explicit the names of the antagonists; that is what sets it apart.

On the level of pure melodrama, it is entertaining, fast-paced and convincingly acted. The opening scene suggests an erotically-charged no man's land, namely the beach community of San Juno, anno 1947. This is the scene that I think will remain in my memory, because it precedes all the rhetoric, legalistic and otherwise, which never quite connects with the reality of spontaneous behaviour - simply, groping in the dark.

This great film will come as a great shock to anyone who thinks of 1950s America in Leave It To Beaver terms, and that's a very good thing. An exaggerated but not misleading portrait of a hugely racist and sexist nation at its worst, with a feel-good conclusion that rings false in light of what we've just seen and generally know to be true about the US at the time. The performances are good for the most part, but the things these people say and do may give you the creeps. The scene in front of the city hall when the local white men are about to use nitro to blow up the front door is absolutely frightening. The 50s will never seem the same again, and that's a very good thing. This movie should be part of history courses.