Noir in the courtroom

Films noirs are most often set in bars and nightclubs, dark back alleys, around horse racing tracks and boxing rings, or in seedy hideaways – in short, in environments where seasoned criminals feel at home and where, on the contrary, ordinary citizens go only reluctantly or under coercion. Sometimes, however, the wheels of justice are set in motion, and the film’s stories take us to the offices of private detectives, police stations or stately courtrooms. It is the courts, where the guilt and innocence of noir protagonists are decided, that will be the focus of another section of the 13th Noir Film Festival.

In addition to the court setting, all four selected films share an exceptionally strong cast that is bound to please any noir fan. In Knock on Any Door (1949), Humphrey Bogart plays a defense attorney who, as a family acquaintance, takes on the case of a juvenile delinquent accused of murdering a police officer. In The People Against O’Hara (1951), Spencer Tracy excels as an aging and fallible attorney who discovers he’s simply not up to the high court game anymore. One of the many films that made Edward G. Robinson’s acting mastery stand out is the noir drama Illegal (1955), in which an articulate prosecutor makes a fatal mistake and faces a precipitous career fall. And finally, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) by the legendary Billy Wilder – with a stellar cast led by Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich – offers a tangled tale of murder based on Agatha Christie’s play, culminating in a series of startling revelations that create a link to this year’s main section Spoiler alert!