Witness For The Prosecution

Being a bit under the weather, I found myself watching this old movie on TV this morning. Quite the entertaining tale. Made me wonder about acting. Here we have actors playing roles in a film. However, it seems that our two main characters (Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich) are also playing roles. The lead is playing the innocent man being unfairly prosecuted. Marlene plays the role of treacherous wife scheming to get rid of her husband. In the "reality" of the story, the lead is actually a scheming murderer and Marlene is actually faithful.

Unlike modern TV dramas, there are no clues, hints, or even red herrings to detract from our lead characters apparent truthfulness. Well, we do have the old, experienced defense attorney (Charles Laughton) cluing us in that something wasn't quite square about this whole deal. In any case, when their true colors are revealed it is a bit of a surprise, but then we have the sudden revealing of yet another layer of deceit. Perhaps Marlene says is it best when she says an actress, after all.