Witness to Murder – The Movie Gourmet

This week: a hard-to-find suspense classic on TV and a disappointing romcom.

Here’s my remembrance of the late director Michael Apted, whose 9 Seven Up movies constitute the greatest documentary series in the history of cinema. Got to see him in person at the 2019 Mill Valley Film Festival.

ON VIDEO

I was disappointed in Sofia Coppola’s inoffensive but tired romantic comedy On the Rocks, a waste of Coppola’s talent and Bill Murray’s. I’ve often said that I could watch Bill Murray read the phone book, but this IS like Bill Murray reading the phone book. AppleTV.

And some more current films:

Peter Capaldi in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: searing, with an electric performance. Netflix.
The Personal History of David Copperfield: Dickins alive, at last. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Another Round: Humanity buzzed. Amazon.
Mank: biting the hand. Netflix.
One Night in Miami: four icons share one pivotal moment. Amazon.
My Psychedelic Love Story: Errol Morris and the unreliable narrator. HBO.
Martin Eden: Jack London in an art film (link goes live soon). Laemmle.
The Mystery of D. B. Cooper: the hijacking that keeps on giving. HBO.
Belushi: more texture to the story that you already know. Showtime.
Ammonite: When the slow burn is a dud. Amazon.
The Prom: airy confection. Netflix.

ON TV

Don’t miss the gripping and hard-to-find Witness to Murder, which I wrote about in depth yesterday, on Turner Classic Movies tomorrow night and Sunday morning.

And on January 18, TCM airs Pedro Almodovar’s 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, eighty-eight minutes of non-stop hilarity. Women on the Verge is not as profound as Almodovar’s later work, but it is a masterpiece of madcap comedy.

Carmen Maura plays Pepa, a voice-over actress who has been dumped by her voice-over actor boyfriend, Ivan. Pepa has a gal pal who has discovered that her new squeeze is a Shiite terrorist. Ivan has a lunatic wife (who is armed and bewigged), a bespectacled son (a very young Antonio Banderas) and a new feminist attorney girlfriend. Everyone converges in Pepa’s apartment, on the streets of Madrid and on the way to a flight to Stockholm. Along the way, there is a mambo-loving Mad Hatter of a cabbie and some barbiturate-spiked gazpacho. Comic mayhem ensues.

Almodovar had made several outrageously raucous movies before, but Women on the Verge was the art house hit that first brought him to the attention of American audiences. Today he is one of our very best film makers. His Talk To Her (2002), Bad Education (2004) and Broken Embraces (2009) each made the top four on my lists of the years’ best films.

Actress Rossy de Palma, a very good sport in a key supporting role, sports one of the greatest noses in cinema.

Rossy De Palma in WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

On January 16 and 17, Turner Classic Movies is airing the gripping and hard-to-find 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.

See my complete post on Witness to Murder, for more on the filmmakers and supporting cast. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

On this weekend’s TCM broadcast of Witness to Murder, film historian Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir – will provide his always insightful intro and outro. Witness to Murder is not available to stream; I own the DVD. Be sure to DVR it when it airs on Turner Classic Movies.

Movies to See Right Now (at home)

coming on TV: WITNESS TO MURDER