Hostile Witness

Enjoyable, entertaining, somewhat stagy film version of play Hostile Witness stars Ray Milland(who also directs) as a barrister who having lost his daughter to a hit-and-run driver vows vengeance on the man responsible. This leads to his eventual arrest under a series of intriguing red herrings and some interesting if not wholly plausible logic. Milland gives a , how shall I put it , a strong - STRONG - performance. He barks out nearly everything he says and looks like he'll pop a vein any minute. He is enjoyable nonetheless. The rest of the cast of British stalwarts make for good viewing as well. Sylvia Syms as a junior barrister is particularly strong as is Geoffrey Lumsden as a provincial older military relic - totally out of step with reality in many ways and very engaging to watch. Hostile Witness is nothing great or profound by any means but makes for a good, old-fashioned courtroom drama/mystery.

Hostile Witness (1968)

When Hollywood was shifting to a new mode of movie-making, Britain was apparently still able to make what you might call a routine, early 1960s styled film. And no wonder, with old school Ray Milland as both leading actor and director. It's a modern England, including some terrific Mod fashion on the women (and nice suits on the men, to be fair). But this is a relatively stiff affair, and for a 1968 film, rather old fashioned, pleasurable and unexceptional.

It's worth adding, quickly, that this is a dull film cinematically, too. It's widescreen of course (not a made for television movie) but it's lighted as if for t.v. (low contrast ratio) and the camera is functional, rarely or never an active presence, or even a creative one. This I blame on Milland as much as the cinematographer. It frankly kills even the best scenes, which are blasted with light in an unrealistic and dulling way. Sad. But if you know Milland, who can sometimes be interesting (if never exciting), it makes sense--he's a stiff, snotty type, at least on screen.

But he's not a bad actor, and if there is one consistent strength, in acting, it's actually the director. Which is fair enough. And there is the plot, which I think is supposed to sustain us, even if it's doled out painfully slowly. The curiosity is the sudden death of what might have seemed a potential main character, the beautiful (and well dressed) daughter of the leading man, high powered lawyer Simon Crawford (Milland). You get the sense in this film (more than his few others he directed) that he is aware of Hitchcock's later films (post-Psycho era). As a fellow Brit (Milland was Welsh), there was a commiseration, no doubt (same era, same sense of drama within a relatively false presentation). And as a crime film replete with ordinary folk overwhelmed by terrible facts.

But as a director, Milland is no Hitchcock, which they probably both realized in the rather terrific "Dial M for Murder" which was directed by one master and acted by the other (in one of his best performances). The plot, the strength of the movie, is laid out mostly through drawing room (or law office) conversations. It's slow going, if somewhat rigorous in logic. Milland's stiffness is better suited to the second half of the movie, where he is in the formality of the courtroom. In the end, this is a courtroom drama, with all its argument-based back and forth. The logic is stretched by the end however, with a showdown of shouting convictions and then a last minute surprise (the last ten seconds of the movie) and it's almost laughable.

There are so many better movies, I'd skip this one. To say it's solid on some old-fashioned level isn't really a defense. There's little here to lift it up, very little.

I found this courtroom drama extremely enjoyable for a large number of reasons. I thought that there were excellent performances from the cast but especially the two leading actors Ray Milland and Sylvia Syms. The drama unfolded at an easy to follow pace with a leading barrister (Ray Milland) being accused of killing his neighbour (a high court judge) following the tragic accident which killed his daughter. We follow his trial through many twists and turns with at first his junior (Sylvia Syms) defending him but ending up with him defending himself. As you may expect from such a film, there is an unexpected twist at the end. I have tried for years to find this released on video or DVD but with no success. I consider that this film is good enough for release.

1967's "Hostile Witness" was the last of five feature films to be directed by actor Ray Milland, who also starred in each one, dating back to his 1955 Western "A Man Alone" (his best known was AIP's "Panic in Year Zero!" in 1962). The experience of starring in Jack Roffey's successful Broadway play (which he also toured in the US and Australia) led Milland to helm this movie adaptation at London's Shepperton Studios, the stationary camera reminding us of its stage origins yet still engaging with a veteran cast of stalwarts like Felix Aylmer (as the presiding judge), Raymond Huntley (as the prosecutor), Richard Hurndall (as the investigator), and especially Sylvia Syms as Milland's promising young clerk, whose services are sorely missed once he begins to defend himself. His barrister Oliver Crawford is as arrogant as he is confident in his victorious ways, only to see his world come crashing down with the unexpected death of his only daughter, the victim of a hit-and-run right outside his home. After spending three months recovering from the tragedy, the barrister returns to work but is quickly sidetracked by the murder of a trusted friend who is presumed to have been guilty of the crime, circumstantial evidence pointing to Crawford as the guilty party. At this point we never leave the courtroom, and the viewer cannot be certain if a nervous breakdown could be responsible for turning Crawford into an undeniable killer. Milland acquits himself well though the story tends to bog down near the end of its 102 minutes, his screen career only picking up again three years later as Ryan O'Neal's stern father in the hugely successful "Love Story."

I am not that big a fan of courtroom drama but quite enjoyed this one, probably because of the decent cast, especially Milland in the lead. I see that it is based on a Broadway play but is transposed to London. I suppose British courts have a more pictorial value in the gowns and wigs than do American courts. Talkng of wigs, though, the one adorning Milland's head when out if court is no more real-looking than the lawyer's wig he wears in court !