George Sanders plays the nasty villain with his usual oily superficiality, putting on a show of condescending cooperation with the police. At every step of the investigation the cops dismiss her as a ninny the 'evidence' won't back up her eyewitness account, and when a woman is involved no further thought is necessary. Witness to Murder is an only partly successful exercise in the paranoia sweepstakes. But he thinks she's gone too far when she claims that Richter means to kill her and make it look like suicide. Lawrence Mathews has expressed interest and concern for Cheryl, but has always maintained that she's simply mistaken. By faking threat notes he induces the cops to have Cheryl institutionalized for observation. Richter is eventually able to tell her to her face that he's going to win. This alerts Richter, who begins a careful plan to make Cheryl appear utterly unstable, so that the authorities will believe his claim that is she who is persecuting him. Cheryl is convinced to drop the matter, but snoops on her own. Even before they meet her, they seem to assume that the whole thing was Cheryl's imagination. But the clever killer Albert Richter (George Sanders) hides the body and puts on a good show for the investigating officers Lawrence Mathews and Eddie Vincent (Gary Merrill & Jesse White). Interior decorator Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) looks out her apartment window one night and sees a man strangling a woman to death. And if that's not enough extremes for Stanwyck to perform, the show also tosses in a bit of The Snake Pit.
WITNESS TO MURDER MOVIE MOVIE
Erskine's original story also shares a number of similarities with the 1949 hit The Window, a movie about a boy witnessing a killing through an apartment window, and then being chased to the top A founding creator of the noir style, Stanwyck won acclaim for her turn as a terrified woman marked for murder in the immensely popular Sorry, Wrong Number. He'd just come up with the stories for the noir pictures Angel Face and Split Second, and took on producing chores as well for a third, Witness to Murder. In 1954 she worked for independent producer Chester Erskine, who had written, produced and directed the hit The Egg and I and written and directed odd pix like Androcles and the Lion. She weathered the 1950s in fine form, making her share of great pictures and always playing leading roles. except the murderer himself!"īarbara Stanwyck was one of the most capable and savvy Hollywood actresses ever, a star who never gave a bad performance. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Jesse White, Harry Shannon, Claire Carleton, Lewis Martin, Juanita Moore, Claude Akins. Street Date Novem/ available through Kino Lorber / 29.95