Beyond a Reasonable Doubt takes a while to warm to its story. A lot is explained in the opening sequences, and I was beginning to wonder if the film would seem a lot longer than its eighty-minute running time. But it’s all worth it, especially when the plot twists start coming, almost one right after the other. In fact, the film is worth seeing more than once. I have seen it twice now.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is the third of director Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir film trilogy. The others are The Blue Gardenia (released on March 28, 1953) and While the City Sleeps Doubt (released on May 16, 1956). Click on each article title in the list below to find all the articles I have written about the first two films for this series in April.
◊ The Blue Gardenia (1953): The First in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy
◊ While the City Sleeps (1956): The Second in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy
The film starts in a prison block, with a prisoner being escorted by guards to the electric chair. He is executed with a viewing box of witnesses to the execution that include Tom Garrett and Austin Spencer. Garrett was once a news reporter working for Austin Spencer, a newspaper publisher and Garrett’s future father-in-law. They go out for a drink after the execution, and Austin Spencer tells Garrett that he is adamantly opposed to capital punishment and states his arguments against it.
Garrett and Spencer have another discussion about the death penalty in Spencer’s newspaper offices. Spencer maintains that an innocent man can be arrested, convicted, and executed on circumstantial evidence. He has been formulating a plan about getting an innocent man arrested for a capital crime that he did not commit and proving that this same man can be convicted and sentenced on circumstantial evidence alone. Spencer nominates Tom Garrett to be the suspect in his experiment.
Because Spencer’s goal is one of compassion about capital punishment and innocent people wrongly accused and convicted, it’s easy to believe in Spencer’s plan as much as he does. But it’s really another version of the end justifying the means. The plot of this film noir could be the basis of a Greek tragedy and a study in hubris. Austin Spencer makes his capital punishment experiment sound very simple, even though so many unforeseen events can make it all go so very wrong. Spencer claims that there would be no risk to Garrett because Spencer would reveal all their plans after Garrett is convicted and sentenced, and Spencer’s word and reputation would get Garrett acquitted and pardoned automatically. Spencer tells Garrett that he has some standing in the community, and he feels that both of them can rely on that standing and goodwill. Garrett agrees to participate in the experiment and, because this is noir, viewers know that the experiment will go downhill eventually.
It isn’t long before Spencer and Garrett find a murder case for their experiment. A young woman, a burlesque dancer named Patty Gray, was found in a ravine outside town. They start trying to find out what the police know so that they can match circumstantial evidence to fit Tom Garrett. Austin Spencer assigns the task to one of his reporters, Charlie Miller. Spencer asks him to follow the Patty Gray murder case and gather as much information about it as possible. Miller says that he will probably have to work off the record, but Spencer doesn’t care about a possible newspaper story. He plans to use the Gray case and Tom Garrett to test his experiment about capital punishment. He uses Charlie Miller to do the investigating without telling him of his ulterior motives.
(This article about Beyond a Reasonable Doubt contains spoilers.)
Lieutenant Kennedy from the local police department is handling the investigation, and Charlie Miller works with him to get the details about the murder. Patty Gray’s coworkers and fellow burlesque dancers, Joan Williams, Terry Larue, and Dolly Moore, are interviewed by Lieutenant Kennedy and treated well, which was a little bit of a surprise to me. Films noir are not known for treating female characters all that well in general. Kennedy wants to know what they saw and heard and what they know about Patty Gray, and they cooperate voluntarily. Tom Garrett eventually visits the dance club and singles out Dorothy Moore to use in the capital punishment experiment.
The film never makes clear whether Austin Spencer plans to publish articles about the murder investigation or whether Tom Garrett plan to use the experience as the basis for a new book someday. Both possibilities are brought up in the narrative, but both men get so caught up in framing Garrett that they don’t return to either idea. The newspaper owned by Austin Spencer covers the murder and the investigation much as it would any other case, but no one besides Spencer and Garrett know about their experiment, not even Susan Spencer, Austin’s daughter and Tom’s now former fiancée.
One of the dancers, Terry Larue, is getting suspicious of Garrett, and she tells Dolly Moore to be wary. Moore protests at first, but then decides to call Lieutenant Kennedy. He takes their concerns seriously and follows Garrett and Moore when they go for a drive to the remote location where Gray’s body was discovered. Kennedy steps in when Garrett tries to force himself on Dolly Moore. (Dana Andrews is very good at portraying a man willing to use force to get what he wants from a woman: He plays the same kind of character in Fallen Angel [1945] and Daisy Kenyon [1947].) Garrett is now a suspect, and he is brought into the police station for questioning.
District Attorney Roy Thompson, his assistant Bob Hale, and the police detectives believe that he is guilty, and he is arrested and charged with Patty Gray’s murder. Everything he claims during his trial matches the experiment details and the circumstantial evidence found in the police investigation perfectly, and Garrett is found guilty.
Austin Spencer refuses to use his newspaper to sway public opinion after Tom Garrett is arrested, even though his daughter Susan asks for this kind of help. Austin Spencer wants to adhere to journalistic standards, stick to facts, and not prejudge Garrett’s guilt or innocence, although he is lying to keep his capital punishment experiment a secret, even when questioned by the assistant district attorney Bob Hale. He also attends Tom Garrett’s murder trial and watches highlights of the trial on television with his daughter Susan and Garrett’s defense attorney, Jonathan Wilson, all without mentioning anything about the experiment.
Austin Spencer and Tom Garrett are similar to the main characters in the first two films of Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir trilogy. In While the City Sleeps, several characters use the news to further their own interests, much like Casey Mayo does in The Blue Gardenia. Mayo in The Blue Gardenia is a newspaper writer; Edward Mobley in While the City Sleeps is a reporter turned television news anchor. These two characters use their romantic interests for their own professional benefit. Mayo offers advice and legal help to the murderer of Harry Prebble with no intention of following through; Mobley uses his girlfriend as bait to catch a serial killer. In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Austin Spencer uses his position as newspaper editor to conduct an experiment about the ease of convicting the wrong man. He and Tom Garrett could be described as pursuing a greater good (proving how the justice system can execute an innocent man), but both of them use deception to do so.
Before the jury reaches a verdict in Garrett’s trial, Austin Spencer gathers all the photos that he took and all his notes, gets in his car, and is broadsided by a truck, an accident that kills him. All the evidence burns in the resulting crash. When Susan Spencer inherits the newspaper after her father’s death, she insists that the reporters write feature series and editorials to sway public opinion in Tom Garrett’s favor. The reporters remind her of her father’s wishes about adhering to journalistic standards, but she insists: Her father is no longer alive and she is now in charge, at least until the executor of her father’s estate returns to the United States. Susan Spencer may not be sticking strictly to facts, but she is not lying to the public about her intentions. Her approach in the newspaper works well, so well in fact that district attorney Roy Thompson is getting worried about the case and wants to make sure that it is airtight. He sends his assistant Bob Hale to look for more evidence about Patty Gray and Tom Garrett before Garrett’s execution, and his investigation leads to more surprises and plot twists.
One of the reasons for the surprises is Dana Andrews’s performance as Tom Garrett: Garrett and Patty Gray are (and were) keeping secrets, and Andrews’s performance never once lets on that his character is hiding anything out of the ordinary. The narrative gets off to a slow start, but it picks up as the narrative unfolds, and it is like a roller coaster ride once Garrett’s trial ends. I always enjoy being surprised by a story, on-screen or in print, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt delivers plenty of surprises. In many ways, it is the most pessimistic of the three films in the newspaper noir trilogy, but it’s the one most satisfying as noir.
September 13, 1956, release date • Directed by Fritz Lang • Screenplay by Douglas Morrow • Based on a story by Douglas Morrow • Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert • Edited by Gene Fowler Jr. • Cinematography by William Snyder
Dana Andrews as Tom Garrett • Joan Fontaine as Susan Spencer • Sidney Blackmer as Austin Spencer • Shepperd Strudwick as defense attorney Jonathan Wilson • Arthur Franz as Bob Hale • Philip Bourneuf as district attorney Roy Thompson • Edward Binns as Lieutenant Kennedy • Barbara Nichols as Dolly Moore • Robin Raymond as Terry Larue • Joyce Taylor as Joan Williams • William F. Leicester as Charlie Miller, reporter • Dan Seymour as Greco, bar owner • Rusty Lane as the trial judge • Carleton Young as Allan Kirk • Charles Evans as the governor • Wendell Niles as the announcer
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures • Produced by Bert Friedlob Productions Inc.
No comments:
Post a Comment