CLYDEFRO JONES ON BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
Clydefro Jones reviews Fritz Lang’s final Hollywood film, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (which is available on DVD now).
The last Hollywood picture from the industry’s most consistently great director, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is a tightly wound and crackling film noir armed with a brilliant plot device. Fritz Lang’s 1956 movie finds writer Dana Andrews teaming up with his future father-in-law (Sidney Blackmer), a newspaperman adamantly against capital punishment, to intentionally frame Andrews for a murder. They plant clues and do enough legwork to get Andrews charged with the high-profile crime but are careful to take photographs that should vindicate him in the event of a conviction. The idea is to show the fallibility of the death penalty and of how circumstantial evidence can, with enough coincidences, put an innocent in line for execution. Left out of their plan is Joan Fontaine as Andrews’ fiancee. She’s cruelly kept in the dark about the entire thing.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt has a very pulpy feel to its central conceit. Time and again, things occur that seem to bend the plausibility of what we’re seeing. There’s the quizzical main intention of Andrews’ character, with the excuse being that he’s doing it as research for a novel and thus in the name of art, but also tough to figure are Fontaine’s relatively calm demeanor and the almost sadistic insanity of a father putting his daughter and future son-in-law through such an ordeal. Perhaps it’s Lang’s misanthropy at work. Regardless, the apparent neatness of it all proves to be an interesting layer. Shades of the director’s The Woman in the Window can be seen to some extent. That film, like this one, has an odd detachment from reality in terms of the situations and actions of the characters. Motivations do not, on the surface, always make sense.
Given his penchant for exploring criminal justice in both the formal and informal sense, Lang must have been right at home with this material. It tackles one of his cinematic obsessions – guilt – head on and somewhat more devilishly than he’d had the chance to previously. The ever cynical director seemed to grow increasingly crusty in his older age. The sympathy and call to action seen earlier in films like You Only Live Once and Fury were replaced by a more defeatist sentiment here and in the just-previous While the City Sleeps. Lang’s attitude, if not necessarily his ideology, somehow became even more paranoid and pessimistic during his time working in Hollywood. The rational observer might note how Lang’s choices must have also shrank as the fifties wore on, but that hardly changes the cumulative effect of now watching his studio films and recognizing the many similarities sprinkled among them. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt strips some of these ideas to their marrow, incorporating an entire scenario of legal and moral concern in which the question of guilt is forced to take on various meanings. Even the film’s title, a reference to the burden of proof required to render a guilty verdict in criminal cases, highlights how narrow the criteria needed for punishment ostensibly must be.
(WARNING: serious plot spoilers follow)
To some extent, Lang here is presenting a filmic test case in much the same way his protagonist is voluntarily serving as an example to, in theory, highlight the flaws of the legal system. The director is asking his audience to go along with a highly unusual scenario and to do so with a sympathy that will later become unavoidably confused and conflicted. There are two great chances for the film to pull the rug out beneath the audience, and Lang makes the best of both. When Blackmer’s character bites the dust in a car accident, with those exculpating photos in tow, it’s a delicious shock and a testament to Lang’s powers of manipulation. At this point, a first-time viewer has almost no indication that Andrews truly is guilty (the other big twist) so it’s a real moment to gasp. How will our “innocent” hero avoid execution? The eventual revelation that he’s the murderer largely comes out of nowhere (though, armed with such knowledge, it is possible to see very minor hints earlier). This is due in part by having an actor in Andrews with a stalwart, good guy persona. It’s generally assumed he’s innocent, and any thoughts otherwise don’t really occur during the film. Similarly, the blonde floozy played so well by Barbara Nichols is easily dismissed as expendable and just a pawn in Andrews’ plan.
Part of the appeal in seeing Lang’s name attached to a film is knowing that he never faded or became content to rely on past successes. With the possible exception of American Guerrilla in the Philippines, there are no bad Fritz Lang movies. One theme he began during his silent picture days in Germany and returned to in earnest with his final film, Die 1000 Augen des Mabuse, was voyeurism, aided by eavesdropping devices. Here Lang inserts television cameras into the courtroom during Andrews’ trial. Clearly, a point is being made or the deliberate, obvious inclusion of those bulky cameras would not have happened. Is Lang perhaps predicting the tabloid culture that’s now exploded far beyond even his wildest fears? It’s certainly a reinforcement of the idea that people have an odd inclination to use others’ crimes as their own entertainment, a fact Lang must have been rather thankful for over the course of his career.
Clydefro Jones writes for TheDigitalFix and his own film review blog, Clydefro.com
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt can be ordered from Amazon here.
GALLERY
