Just so...so bad

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The title, "Witness to Murder" tells you what this movie is all about in three words. Made near the end of the classic film noir period, it is a riveting drama. It had unfortunately disappeared in recent years largely because of its plot similarities to Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) witness Albert Richter (George Sanders) strangling an unknown female. She immediately calls the cops. Lt. Lawernce Mathews (Gary Merrill) and Sgt. Eddie Vincent (Jesse White),respond. The police at first dismiss Cheryl's story chalking it up to a bad dream. Mathews becomes attracted to Cheryl and the two begin seeing each other. Although sympathetic, Mathews continues to insist on some sort of evidence to substantiate Cheryl's story.Richter, meanwhile learns that Cheryl had witnessed the murder and concocts a plan to discredit her story and create the impression that she is going mad. Police Captain Donnelly (Harry Shannon) is convinced and has Cheryl placed in an "observation" ward at the local hospital. Following her release and despite Mathews' attempts to try and prove her story, Richter confronts Cheryl in her apartment and.....................................Barbara Stanwyck gives a stand out performance as the nervous Cheryl. Her scenes in the hospital are especially riveting as she tries to convince the medical staff of her sanity. Claire Carleton, Juanita Moore and the then 90 plus year old Adeline DeWalt Reynolds impress as the other patients in the room. Was there ever a better actor to play the suave sophisticated stuffed shirt villain than George Sanders? His cunning manipulative Richter is one of his best performances. Jesse White (the Maytag repairman) has little to do except smoke his trademark cigar.The atmosphere of the story is pure noir, complete with darkened rooms, rain soaked streets et al. The only criticism I have is the scene where Sanders confesses to Stanwyck and reveals his plans for the future. A little melodramatic and unnecessary in my opinion.After all is said and done "Witness to Murder" turns out to be a classic film noir.

The movie shows what a cast and crew of Hollywood veterans could do even as the B-movie was on its last legs. Sure, the material is derivative. For some reason these windowpane murders were popular plot lines at the time, especially with Rear Window (1954). Maybe that's because there's so much built-in suspense to proving that you're not just imagining or dreaming what you think you see. This movie manages the suspense in spades, thanks to journeyman director Rowland, cinematographer Alton, and a near-perfect cast that make it all seem so real.Pity poor Stanwyck! She spies super slick neighbor Sanders throttling a girl, but can't convince the cops since Sanders is ever one step ahead. Meanwhile, Sanders is at his coldly calculating and charming best, while Stanwick wobbles expressively as a woman in distress. Toss in Gary Merrill as a romantically inclined cop, and together they manage to breathe real life into familiar material.Hard to say enough about Alton's expressive photography. Some of those b&w compositions are darn near artistic; at the same time, they lend the dramatics a properly noirish atmosphere. No, there's nothing really new here, but it's so darn well done, you'll hardly notice. I'm just sorry that these intense little human dramas have been replaced on screen by special effects extravaganzas that entertain mainly 12-year olds.

The story begins on a windy night in Los Angeles. Cheryl Draper gets up from bed to close her bedroom window, and lo and behold, she looks across the street at an apartment facing hers, only to see a man strangling a woman. She calls to notify what she had witnessed, little does she know she is dealing with a cunning man, Albert Richter, who will make her life miserable.This 1954 film was clearly a vehicle for an aging Barbara Stanwyck, even though the woman in the story must have been in her twenties. There are things that don't make much sense and holes in the plot, but director Roy Rowland and his writer, Charles Erskine, did what they could with a plot that goes nowhere and things are not properly explained. Nunnally Johnson cooperated with the screen treatment, but he gets no credit for it. We decided not to fight it and went along with this implausible story that shows why Barbara Stanwyck was one of the best in the business.The suave George Sanders plays the evil man that is trying to frame Cheryl by any means. Mr. Sanders was not at his best though, even as the man who's always a step ahead of our heroine. Gary Merrill is not totally convincing as the police detective Larry Matthews attracted to Cheryl. Jesse White plays his partner.The camera work of John Alton and the editing of Robert Swink make the film even better than it should have been under another team. Best sequence is the chase through the building under construction.

WITNESS TO MURDER is one of the great unsung noir gems from the 1950s. Sharply directed by Roy Rowland and brilliantly photographed by John Alton, it is criminal that this terrific film has yet to see a DVD release.Barbara Stanwyck stars as a woman who inadvertently witnesses a murder one night when, awakened by a thunderclap, goes to her window and sees her neighbor in an apartment across the street (George Sanders) strangle a woman to death. Shaken but collected, she phones the police who respond to the call but are unable to detect anything out of the ordinary when they arrive to question Sanders. The detectives (Gary Merrill and Jesse White) leave Sanders' apartment convinced that Stanwyck imagined the killing. Determined to prove the cops wrong, she begins to relentlessly hound Sanders who, it turns out, is a former Nazi and author of books promoting the ideology of the Third Reich. Sanders, a cunning adversary, initiates a retaliatory strike against Stanwyck which, before long lands her in a mental asylum. But will she be able to convince Detective Gary Merrill (who by now has fallen in love with her) that her assertions are, after all, true?Darkly suspenseful, albeit preposterously improbable, WITNESS TO MURDER follows a similar thread as REAR WINDOW, released the very same year. The most significant difference being in the Hitchcock film James Stewart is a consciously willing voyeur, drawn into a secret world of spying brought on by his own inertia; Stanwyck succumbs to the ramifications of her voyeurism purely by an accident of nature, the victim of circumstances far beyond her control, placing it much more squarely in the domain of film noir than its better known counterpart. Highly recommended!