By David in TN
Friday, April 13, 2018 at 4:16:00 P.M. EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is Mystery Street (1950). Ricardo Montalban stars as a Boston police detective investigating the murder of a bar girl (Jan Sterling). Marshall Thompson plays the innocent man charged with her murder. Sally Forrest is his loyal wife who suspects her husband was cheating on her with the dead girl.
Bruce Bennett plays a Harvard forensics specialist who helps Montalban solve the crime. The film has circa 1950 forensic science. A sidelight is Montalban's Mexican-American cop going after an upper-class, old family Bostonian.
Mystery Street repeats at 10 a.m. ET Sunday morning, April 15.
Earlier at 12 p.m. ET Saturday, TCM shows Anatomy of a Murder (1959).
This is the Otto Preminger-directed classic starring James Stewart as a lawyer defending a man who killed his wife's alleged rapist.
The story (based on an actual case) is ambiguous as to the guilt of Stewart's client.
One of the best scenes is when James Stewart's character tells his client "the four ways I can defend murder."
4 comments:
TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is Cry Danger (1951) starring Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming. Powell plays a prototype Noir protagonist, a tough guy just out of prison for a "crime he didn't commit." He had been released when an alcoholic ex-Marine provided him with a false alibi in the hope of being cut in for a share of the loot. Powell tells him he's really innocent.
Meanwhile Powell's best friend is still in prison so Powell goes after the real culprit played by William Conrad. Fleming is Powell's ex-girl, now married to his imprisoned friend.
It all shakes out in typical Noir fashion. Cry Danger repeats at 10 am ET Sunday morning, April 22.
Earlier on Saturday, April 21, at 1:30 pm, TCM shows The Young Philadelphians (1959). Paul Newman plays a young lawyer trying to make it in both the legal profession and Philadelphia high society. It's one of the better "lawyer" stories despite the soap opera elements.
At 8 pm ET, Saturday night, TCM features The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Steve McQueen plays the title character, a rich Boston blueblood who masterminds a bank heist just to prove he could do it.
McQueen saw the part of a Brahmin as stretching his acting range.
Mystery Street was a good movie.Thanks for posting.
Anon,
Glad you liked it. I did, too. It just has a dumb, forgettable name that has nothing to do with the story.
From Anatomy of a Murder, The Four Ways I can Defend Murder are:
1. It wasn't murder. It was suicide or accidental.
2. You didn't do it.
3. You were legally justified, like the protection of your home or self defense.
4. The killing was excusable.
Jimmy Stewart's character tells Ben Gazarra's character "You don't fit in any of the first three." When Gazarra exclaims "He raped my wife!," Stewart replies "The time element. You had time to bring in the police but you didn't."
A point lawyers have made about the film is the defense lawyer coaches his client into the defense.
My brother defended a woman in a Knoxville courtroom for vehicular assault and won an acquittal. He said he imitated Jimmy Stewart from Anatomy of a Murder. After that my brother stayed in civil law.
By the way, the judge my brother tried this case before was Randy Nichols, then a judge, later the Knox County District Attorney General for Knox County.
Of the four ways, they can be elastic. The fourth category is sometimes combined with one of the first three. For example, dirtying the victim.
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