Witness to Murder (1954)

(On Cable TV, December 2020) I count at least four excellent reasons to watch Witness to Murder. For one thing, it has a really good late-period film noir premise, as a woman looks outside her apartment window and witnesses a man murdering another woman. The second reason is that our heroine is played by Barbara Stanwyck, in a late-career role (her first was in a 1920s silent film!) that does much to reinforce her chameleon-like acting range. The third reason is her opponent – a deliciously slimy George Sanders, with his haughty attitude complementing a character that delights in covering his track and making the heroine feel as if she’s going crazy. Finally, the fourth reason to watch the film may be more striking to modern audiences: the encroaching paranoia as the heroine tries to convince the authorities that a murder has taken place, but no one will believe her. The film isn’t afraid to rile audiences against impassive authority figures, and that does give, along with a role as a single career woman for the mature Stanwyck, a progressive kick to the result. A fifth, perhaps most visible reason to watch Witness to Murder would be the terrific cinematography, which luxuriates in strong black-and-white imagery to give the film an undeniably film noir visual polish that elevates the script into something worth seeing. No matter the reason, Witness to Murder does rank as a very enjoyable thriller, more for the above-average execution than the sometimes-frustrating nature of the script.