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 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.
