KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

JohnHowardReid Copyright 1955 by Loew's Inc. An M-G-M picture. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 13 October 1955. U.S. release: 7 October 1955. U.K. release: January 1956. Australian release: 7 February 1956. Sydney opening at the St James. Running times: 110 minutes (Aust), 108 minutes (UK), 105 minutes (USA).NOTES: A four-minute scene with Arthur Kennedy in which some mild criticisms are made of the U.S. legal system was deleted from American prints but retained in the U.K. and Australian versions.Arthur Kennedy was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, losing to Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts.Number 7 on the Film Daily's best films of the year list, as voted by over five thousand American film critics.COMMENT: Tremendously popular in its day, Trial is yet another movie that has disappeared from public view. True, it's a film with a number of major deficiencies, but it also offers Arthur Kennedy in what is undoubtedly the most charismatic performance of his career. As a rabble-rousing fund-raiser he really comes across with a force and vitality that's absolutely rivetting. In fact, the rally scene is the most vividly realised in the film, brilliantly directed on a level of wondrously-sustained hysteria, abetted by exceptionally skilful special effects.Unfortunately, the other principals don't quite match Kennedy's expertise. Yes, there are some enthralling support portrayals by the likes of John Hodiak and Juano Hernandez, but Glenn Ford and Dorothy McGuire don't enter into their roles with quite the required zest. Their performances could be justly described as little more than routine. Of course they are not helped by the irrelevant, predictable and thoroughly cliched romantic interest that the script so artificially stirs up between them.Alas, the most damning indictment against this legal drama is the very illegality, naivety and incredibility of some of its legal arguments. The "solution" is a real cop-out. And as for Armstrong's so called "devastating" cross-examination which is actually so weak and unconvincing... True, Trial has something to offer in the way of engrossing entertainment, but, in all, misguided emphases both in script writing and direction, rob it of the power and high-voltage interest it should have generated. Robson's approach is always slick, but often superficial.

Rapturegal "Trial" stunned me. Set in the '40s, the story shows us how the descendants of the original slave owners, now the modern Jim Crow segregationists, began hiding behind Communist front groups and adopting social causes-- not out of a sense of remorse but only to give the themselves a veneer of respectability to avoid detection. Sound familiar? Since the end of WW2,these Marxist wannabees have been infiltrating academia, the media, and the entertainment industry in a combined effort to destroy the nation they hate by revisionist history and constant negative propaganda. Is it any wonder why liberals despise Senator Joe McCarthy so much? Dorothy McGuire's speech to Glenn Ford describing how she became a Communist "fellow traveler in college" could have been written by millions of today's campus snowflakes ... that is, IF they ever learned how to write a coherent sentence between riots.

blanche-2 "Trial," released in 1955 and directed by Mark Robson, starts out quite typically. A Hispanic young man (Rafael Campos) is accused of assaulting and murdering a 15-year-old girl. There is all of the accompanying town prejudice.A law professor, David Blake (Glenn Ford) who needs trial experience in order to keep his job is taken on by attorney Barney Castle (Arthur Kennedy) and assigned the case. Though Blake's instincts go against Castle's orders, his insecurity kicks in and he conducts the pre-trial procedures the way that Barney wants them, little realizing that Barney has a very hidden agenda.This interesting film was done at the height of the Red Scare. It's very well-acted if disconcerting - only because there is no hint at the beginning as to where this film is going to lead. Dorothy McGuire plays Castle's assistant and ex-girlfriend who falls for Blake, and Katy Jurado plays the boy's easily influenced mother. Someone else mentioned the black actor, Brazilian-born Juano Hernandez, who plays the judge. A former Broadway actor, Hernandez gives a marvelous performance and is inspired casting. Sadly, all of these actors -- Ford, McGuire, Kennedy, Campos, Hernandez, Jurado, John Hodiak (who plays the prosecutor) and Ray Middleton (the sheriff) are gone now.Well worth watching.

bux A tepid tale of race, court-room tactics, communism, crooked lawyers, and desperate educators. Sound convoluted? It is. Somewhere in this mixture there was a great story, but it got lost in an attempt to expose too much. Considering the cast, writer, and director this one should have been great. Somehow we never really care much about the central characters, and the story rambles on to a conclusion that is unrealistic, at best.