Witness to Murder (1954)

Director:

Roy Rowland

Writer:

Chester Erskine (writer)

Release Date:

15 April 1954 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Crime | Thriller

Tagline:

THE SUSPENSE SHOCK OF THE YEAR!

Plot:

Barbara Stanwyck sees a murder through her bedroom window, but no one will believe her. She is stalked...

Plot Keywords:

Murder

Cast

Barbara Stanwyck	...	Cheryl Draper
George Sanders	...	Albert Richter
Gary Merrill	...	Police Lt. Lawrence Mathews
Jesse White	...	Police Sgt. Eddie Vincent
Harry Shannon	...	Police Capt. Donnelly
Claire Carleton	...	Mae - the blonde in mental ward
Lewis Martin	...	Hospital psychiatrist
Dick Elliott	...	Apartment building manager
Harry Tyler	...	Charlie
Juanita Moore	...	Hospital worker
Joy Hallward	...	Cheryl's co-worker
Adeline De Walt Reynolds	...	Old lady in hospital

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.75 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Canada:14A (Ontario) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved

Company:

Chester Erskine Productions

Goofs:

Continuity: After Cheryl leaves the police station, believing that nobody believes her story, she's speeding around curves on a mountain road that's absolutely bone dry. In the shots where the police car is pulling her over, the roads are wet with rain, as they are in the following scenes where the police offers arrive at the apartment building to question the residents.

Movie Connections:

References "Dragnet" (1951)

Soundtrack:

Nowhere Blues

In this effective, pre-feminist potboiler, the Barbara Stanwyck character is considered an unreliable witness because she's a middle-aged, single, career woman.

In addition to its solid performances, tight storytelling and John Alton's superior cinematography, what makes "Witness to Murder" particularly powerful today is the movie's pre-feminist view of its leading character's dilemma. "But I saw the murder, I SAW the murder," the Stanwyck character insists. Yet no one believes her because 1) she's a woman; 2) she's unmarried; 3) she's menopausal. Nobody even blinks an eye when she's dumped in a mental hospital, which gets viewers really riled because they share her point of view. The audience sees the murder along with Stanwyck and can feel her humiliation, anger and frustration. That's why the movie works.