Boy, this can be a frustrating story to watch, but the acting was great with a number of well-known people doing their usual excellent jobs. I'm speaking of actors like Lee J. Cobb, Arthur Kennedy, Dana Andrews, Ed Begley, Sam Lavene, Jane Wyatt, Robert Keith and more.
The story shows how people go about doing things for the wrong reasons. It's tragic when it involves a man's life. Here, an Episcopal priest gets shot in broad daylight in a New England town (Hartford, Conn., I think.) Amazingly, he runs away and is not caught. Soon, with no clues and no suspects, the public is demanding action. A lot of this looks like a bunch of clichés, but it's based on a true story.
It's an election year so you have one party which is desperate to hand over a killer and satisfy the public. You have the opposite party led by a defense team which doesn't care if their man's guilty or not; they just want the guy to go free and make the others look bad. The cops, meanwhile, don't want to keep looking bad so they're anxious to pin something on the first suspect that looks really guilty. This sort of thing goes back-and-forth throughout the film. You know the suspect "John Waldron" (Kennedy) is Innocent so it's frustrating watching him get in deeper and deeper.
You see two extremes. In the "old days" like when this was filmed, a guy could be brought into the police station and has harassed to the point of making a false confession. Where's the lawyer? "Ah, you'll get one later," says a cop. It looks ridiculous to us today. Now, we are used to the opposite where the accused doesn't go anywhere or say anything without a lawyer present. It seems too many guilty men go free today but - in this movie's era and previous to that - too many innocent people were sentenced. Wouldn't it be nice to have a middle ground where justice always prevails? Even more ridiculous is somebody allowed to bring a gun into the courtroom but, once again, it's life 60 years ago.
Also involved in the story is an overzealous press (what else is new?), promises of government posts, a scorned woman lying her butt off, a man who has put all his money into a business project and what happens in the case affects him, and the usual "good guy" who won't sell out his principles. Speaking of that, about at the one-hour remark, we see a quote from the "Lawyer's Code Of Ethics." I had to laugh; I don't know one lawyer who subscribes to that! From the above, you get the gist of the story. I won't say more for fear of spoilers. Suffice to say, it's a wonderfully-acted film with some good direction by some young director named Elia Kazan! If you watch, be prepared to have your blood pressure go up and down. It's a very manipulative movie, but that helps make it interesting.
The story shows how people go about doing things for the wrong reasons. It's tragic when it involves a man's life. Here, an Episcopal priest gets shot in broad daylight in a New England town (Hartford, Conn., I think.) Amazingly, he runs away and is not caught. Soon, with no clues and no suspects, the public is demanding action. A lot of this looks like a bunch of clichés, but it's based on a true story.
It's an election year so you have one party which is desperate to hand over a killer and satisfy the public. You have the opposite party led by a defense team which doesn't care if their man's guilty or not; they just want the guy to go free and make the others look bad. The cops, meanwhile, don't want to keep looking bad so they're anxious to pin something on the first suspect that looks really guilty. This sort of thing goes back-and-forth throughout the film. You know the suspect "John Waldron" (Kennedy) is Innocent so it's frustrating watching him get in deeper and deeper.
You see two extremes. In the "old days" like when this was filmed, a guy could be brought into the police station and has harassed to the point of making a false confession. Where's the lawyer? "Ah, you'll get one later," says a cop. It looks ridiculous to us today. Now, we are used to the opposite where the accused doesn't go anywhere or say anything without a lawyer present. It seems too many guilty men go free today but - in this movie's era and previous to that - too many innocent people were sentenced. Wouldn't it be nice to have a middle ground where justice always prevails? Even more ridiculous is somebody allowed to bring a gun into the courtroom but, once again, it's life 60 years ago.
Also involved in the story is an overzealous press (what else is new?), promises of government posts, a scorned woman lying her butt off, a man who has put all his money into a business project and what happens in the case affects him, and the usual "good guy" who won't sell out his principles. Speaking of that, about at the one-hour remark, we see a quote from the "Lawyer's Code Of Ethics." I had to laugh; I don't know one lawyer who subscribes to that! From the above, you get the gist of the story. I won't say more for fear of spoilers. Suffice to say, it's a wonderfully-acted film with some good direction by some young director named Elia Kazan! If you watch, be prepared to have your blood pressure go up and down. It's a very manipulative movie, but that helps make it interesting.