Alice Calhoun was suing husband Robert Frazer for divorce, citing Helen Lee Worthing as the correspondent. Then her lawyer, Mahlon Hamilton, is stabbed to death on the eve of the divorce becoming final, and Frazer goes on trial for the murder. We get to see the murder trial, with David Torrence as the judge; as each witness speaks, we see the events as they describe them. The jury is charged, and go into a long and humorous jury-room scene..... and meanwhile a new witness pops up in the person of Gertrude Short.
It's an odd sort of courtroom proceeding for anyone who has ever taken part in one, since there appears to be no cross-examination: just direct testimony, and then the scene as portrayed. It's an interesting technique in evolution, somewhere between the 'illustrated text' movie techniques that were popular between about 1904 and 1914, and the subjective story-telling techniques that were brought to the audience's full attention in RASHOMON. It's not entirely successful, but given the novelty of the way it is offered, it's worth a look for those interested in the evolution of movie grammar, and not how a trial is actually run.
It's an odd sort of courtroom proceeding for anyone who has ever taken part in one, since there appears to be no cross-examination: just direct testimony, and then the scene as portrayed. It's an interesting technique in evolution, somewhere between the 'illustrated text' movie techniques that were popular between about 1904 and 1914, and the subjective story-telling techniques that were brought to the audience's full attention in RASHOMON. It's not entirely successful, but given the novelty of the way it is offered, it's worth a look for those interested in the evolution of movie grammar, and not how a trial is actually run.
