The Dock Brief

Peter Sellers plays the worst barrister in the Old Bailey, hanging around court day after day hoping for a "dock brief" - a public-defender case assigned, and paid for, by the government - as his only hope of getting any work at all. After years of waiting, he is escorted to the cells to meet his very first client - who at first takes Sellers for a fellow-prisoner, then informs him there is no need for a defense as he is in fact guilty and everyone knows it. Sellers, undaunted, spins fantasies of brilliant defenses, which his client helps him act out in imaginary courtroom scenes. Each fantasy falters on the simple fact that the client really is guilty, but the client cheerfully plays along, sensing that the lawyer needs a victory even more than he does. The emptiness and disappointments of each man's life are revealed in flashback scenes in which, together, they visit one another's lives in times past. When the real trial begins, the lawyer's fantasies ring hollow, but he saves the day with legal maneuvering that only he is qualified to pull off. In the bittersweet final scene, the two walk off together, each understanding how much the other needs him.

The story, by John Mortimer, is a slightly darker version of his familiar "Rumpole of the Bailey" tales. The script, also by Mortimer, is very funny, but the combination of dry British humor and Sellers's almost somnolently underplayed role let most of the humor go by unnoticed. This is the funniest movie I never once laughed at. Attenborough is an understated genius as the mordant bird lover who murders his wife because she *wouldn't* run away with her boyfriend, and then apologizes to his lawyer for being guilty.

Peter Sellers is a lawyer who has waited years for his first case. He gets it in the form of Richard Attenborough, who admits that he killed his wife, Beryl Reid because she wouldn't run away with the boarder. In Attenborough's cell, they brainstorm trial strategies in fantasy. Then they go up to the actual trial.

It's an absolute trifle of a movie, little more than a two-man show about the inanity of the law. That's hardly surprising, given that it's derived from a play by John Mortimer, best remembered for his many judicial mysteries, and the TV series RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY, based on them. Sellers and Attenborough attempt to evoke the sort of movie that might have been made were Laurel & Hardy to make one, although one without anything in the way of physical slapstick.

John Mortimer was a very clever witty man. His writings were accessible, never laboured, they never patronised the audience, baffled them or bored them. As a former barrister, he was entirely used to addressing and winning-over juries. It was plausible at the very least that his writings were based on true experiences. Like Dickens, working in the field of Law exposed him to a gallery of characters and odd situations which were beyond most people's experiences.

And in the radio play version, the story starts with the curious but plausible situation where an imprisoned accused (of murdering his wife) is joined in his cell by the barrister who is to defend him. The dialogue is both entirely reasonable yet at the same time entirely plausible such that the accused wrongly assumes that the barrister is a another accused come to share the cell. A long conversation at entire cross-purposes ensues. The skill and wit is all in the carefully constructed dialogue.

Here in this film version, the simplicity and wit is replaced by superfluous dialogue and additional scenes. Richard Attenborough is excellent as the accused, a modest man with a great deal to be modest about. Peter Sellers is however lack-lustre, perhaps ill at ease with the part and perhaps the direction. Sellers was at base a comedian who became a comic actor. Perhaps in 1962 he had not yet developed the skill to deliver a part he could not empathise with.

I see that it received no awards of any kind - confirmation that it fell flat

This neglected little film is based on a one-act play by John Mortimer, the creator of "Rumpole of the Bailey," and it extends some scenes (particularly the flashbacks to the lives of both the barrister and the accused) in ways that add little but running time. Beryl Reid, a very distinguished British stage actress, is given a role that requires her to do almost nothing but laugh hysterically. Oddly enough, the expansion of the script makes it feel even more theatrical than cinematic.

The real reasons to see this "Trial and Error" (aka "The Dock Brief") are the performances of Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough. The latter was one of England's great character actors before he became a director and a Lord. Here, hidden behind a putty nose, he delivers an impeccable performance as a mediocre little man who kills his wife for a bit of quiet. And this was the period - just before head-turning international fame struck - when Sellers was offering one miraculous performance after another. His barrister is a subtle blend of self-delusional bluster and frightened awareness of his own inadequacy; the delicacy of this performance, especially the love he seems to feel for this little man who might prove his salvation, is a joy to behold. And the very last shot of the film, just before the final credits, made me laugh out loud - very silly, yet absolutely right.

Minor and small scale this screen version of John Mortimer's "The Dock Brief" may have been but it's frequently very funny and boasts two outstanding performances from a BAFTA nominated Richard Attenborough as the mundane, mild-mannered and mostly morose husband accused of murdering his wife, (a rumbustious Beryl Reid), and Peter Sellers as his mediocre if well-meaning barrister. It was perhaps a strange little movie for these two stars to have made at the time and it wasn't really a success but it's likable in its stagey way and there is a very nice supporting performance from David Lodge as a somewhat over-enthusiastic lodger.