In Witness to Murder, Richter (George Sanders) and Cheryl (Barbara Stanwyck) live in neighboring apartments. Cheryl believes she has seen Richter murder someone, but Richter’s clever and ruthless duplicity makes it appear that Cheryl is just crazy. Will Police Lt. Larry Mathews (Gary Merrill) believe her before Richter can make Cheryl his second victim?
What a wowzer first scene! Witness to Murder opens with a gripping scene that economically sets up the plot. “Operator, get me the police! Hurry!” We know immediately and certainly that Richter really committed the murder and that Cheryl really saw it. Throughout the movie, the audience knows this and Richter knows this, but no one else does, and neither does Cheryl herself during segments of the story.
Cheryl reports the murder and the police (Larry Mathews and sidekick) respond. However, Richter has concealed the crime so well that cops can’t find any evidence that a crime occurred. Could Cheryl have been mistaken? Or dreamed it? or made it up? or hallucinated? Is she neurotic and mildly hysteric or is she psychotic and delusional?
Larry develops an immediate attraction to Cheryl, and, despite her apparent emotional instability, begins a courtship.
Richter (malevolently) and Larry (paternalistically) begin gaslighting Cheryl, trying to convince her that she really only imagined what she saw – trying to convince her that what seemed so real, was not. Cheryl starts doubting herself.
Of course, Richter knows that he committed the murder, and he knows that Cheryl knows. To get her out of the way, he schemes to have her seen as crazed stalker. His scheme drives her to an outburst that serves as a pretext for locking her up in a psychiatric facility (with an interview by an oddly brusque shrink). Richter’s attempts to murder Cheryl continue right into Witness to Murder’s Perils-of-Pauline ending.
Barbara Stanwyck is wonderfully compelling and relatable as Cheryl. She’s a regular person, ensnared by circumstance in a nightmare that no one else can recognize and driven to doubt herself. Her meltdown is epic, and so is her gutty escape. And Stanwyck looks great for 47.
I’ve loved George Sanders ever since I saw him in All About Eve when I was in college. Sanders was a master of smoothly charming characters and he was able to give Richter the authority he needs to manipulate the police.
Of the three leads, Gary Merrill has the oddest job – playing a man apparently possessed by denial. Larry, after all, seems to have assessed Cheryl to be a sweet and desirable woman – if only he can get her past those psychotic delusions!
Witness to Murder was shot by John Alton, one of the masters of film noir cinematography. There was no one better to make Sanders loom menacingly in the dark.
Witness to Murder was directed by Roy Rowland, an otherwise undistinguished B director (although he did direct Meet Me in St. Louis). finished career in Europe with three of the less memorable Spaghetti Westerns. Oddly, Rowland’s most enduring work is in film noir – Witness to Murder and the one Mike Hammer film where Mickey Spillane himself played Hammer, The Girl Hunters. In Witness to Murder, Rowland had the rare treat of Stanwyck, Sanders and Alton at his disposal, and he took full advantage.
Rowland’s key contribution is keeping Witness to Murder to a taut eighty-three minutes. That way, we don’t have much opportunity to reflect on Larry Mathews wooing what he thinks is a crazy woman.
Some of the most compelling and original performances are by the actresses playing the mental patients in the asylum: Clare Carleton, Juanita Moore (credited as “Negress”) and Adeline De Walt Reynolds.
Jesse White plays Larry Mathews’ wisecracking sidekick. There’s even a comic reference to Dragnet. Dragnet, which debuted on TV in 1951, was by 1954 already fodder for a cultural reference.
Watch for supporting stalwart Claude Akins in the fourth of his 233 screen roles – uncredited as a cop.
Witness to Murder, which tanked at the box office, was released just five months before Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window (with its VERY similar plot),
Witness to Murder is not available to stream; I own the DVD. Be sure to DVR it on the occasions it airs on Turner Classic Movies.
