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Films

Witness for the Prosecution

Matt Qvortrup sees Agatha Christie meet Aristotle in Billy Wilder’s classic.

From the golden era of Hollywood, this is a rare example of a film that merged the post-Second World War grittiness of English movies with a dose of Tinseltown glamour. Alfred Hitchcock said that many ‘believed that this epic’ was made by him. It wasn’t. But it could have been. Above all, and before we get to the philosophical points, I want to say that Witness for the Prosecution (1957) is a wonderful film: suspenseful, with surprising plot twists, and supreme action from stars from the silver screen, such as the incomparable Marlene Dietrich.

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