Cast:
Orson Welles (Jonathan Wilk), Diane Varsi (Ruth Evans), Dean Stockwell (Judd Steiner), Bradford Dillman (Artie Strauss), E.G. Marshall (District Attorney Harold Horn), Martin Milner (Sid Brooks), Richard Anderson (Max Steiner), Robert F. Simon (Police Lt. Johnson), Edward Binns (Tom Daly), Robert Burton (Charles Straus), Wilton Graff (Mr. Steiner), and Louise Lorimer (Strauss's mother) Directed by Richard Fleischer (#453 - Soylent Green, #460 - Doctor Dolittle, #624 - Conan the Destroyer, #829 - Red Sonja, #870 - The Narrow Margin, and #881 - Fantastic Voyage)
Review:
If you had a career that involved being awarded an Academy Award for your work as a director and included doing plenty of genres in multiple decades of film work, one would probably think that such a name would be fondly remembered for their work. But alas, it isn't always the case to give every director their due, as is the case with Richard Fleischer. Fleischer had directed a handful of films from his debut in 1946 for RKO Radio Pictures (along with the documentary Design for Death, which as producer earned him an Oscar in 1947), which resulted in a few noted releases such as The Narrow Margin (1952). But he shifted his focus to work with other studios as well, such The Happy Time (1952) being for Columbia or Disney with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). But with Violent Sunday (1955), the resulting success led to a contract to direct further with 20th Century Fox. With some exceptions, he would direct there for the next fifteen years, and one of his most noted films made there was Compulsion. It is an adaptation of the 1956 novel of the same name by Meyer Levin (who studied at the University of Chicago in the 1920s while also becoming a news reporter at the same time) that was inspired by the real-life events of what was called "the trial of the century" with the court case of Nathan Leopold Jr and Richard Loeb (two students at the University of Chicago) that saw them put on trial for murder after they tried to commit the "perfect crime" in the murder of Bobby Franks (with a chisel and gag), with one of them having been a firm believer in the concept introduced by Frederick Nietzsche in the "superman". And yes, the first inkling in catching them involved finding a certain pair of glasses near the scene of the crime. Clarence Darrow, hired to defend the two, went for a criticism of capital punishment in terms of what kind of justice it was that resulted in Leopold and Loeb be sentenced to life in prison rather than death (he had them plead guilty to start, so that he could play this out to a judge rather than leave it to a jury). One year after his famed defense, Darrow would be asked to serve on the side of John T. Scopes for a trial involving evolution (deliberately staged for publicity), which would inspire its own play and film. Incidentally, the Leopold and Loeb case also inspired Rope, a 1929 play turned into a film in 1948 by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1958, the surviving Leopold (Loeb was killed in prison in 1936) was granted parole. A year later, he tried to sue the filmmakers on various counts that included "defamation" from the book that tried to block production of the film; incidentally, when he had written and published his own memoir in 1958, it only talked the aftermath of the crime with no childhood mentions or the crime itself; his response to Levin when asked about writing a book together was to ask if Levin would want to help write the memoir, which obviously Levin rejected (incidentally, the film doesn't show the actual killing portrayed on screen). The lawsuit went on for over a decade, for which I'm sure you can see how Leopold lost the lawsuit.
The novel had been turned into a play that ran from 1957 to 1958 that had Dean Stockwell and Roddy McDowall star in the lead two roles. It is a devilishly good time in terms of the queasy murder-thriller that shows one thing above all else: give a rich person time and ideas and they could go crazy. Well, that isn't really the goal by Fleischer, because he really aims to make a solid gripping film with no rest for showing the wicked in all of their pathetic habits that would feel right at home for future films such as In Cold Blood (1967) when it comes to brutal turning-the-screws atmosphere. Of course, the fact that the film was done in CinemaScope probably helps in that regard, giving a scope to such a murky feeling where one is watching Dillman and Stockwell try to go along their way in the aftermath of such brutality to, well, no avail. Welles is given top billing because, well, who says no to Welles? Actually, he only appears after the first hour of a 103-minute film, and I'm sure you know that he will have at least ten minutes to employ a long monologue meant to evoke the actual Darrow and his defense at the trial, which if you did not know, was a closing argument that lasted twelve hours. Apparently, Welles was a grouch for the time he was on set because he wasn't asked to direct the film, which resulted in tantrums on set (the final speech needed a bit of cobbling together because he had to leave right afterwards). Regardless of all that, he does rein in a worthy performance fit for what the film requires as the knight of eloquence that does not overstate the matter at hand. It is about the nature of justice that matters rather than his obviously guilty clients. Of course, Dillman and Stockwell are no slouches when tasked to hold their part of the film, with the latter in particular being a tremendous presence. Stockwell has the challenge of presenting a killer with a varying level of brilliance (as one expects when basically playing Leopold, an intellectual and ornithologist) that is fascinating to view regardless of the amount of pity that can be driven from such a situation. Dillman maneuvers his way around with pronounced confidence that obviously believes in the acts of superior men getting to commit such wanton acts without remorse that makes for such a watchable pair of scoundrels. They make for quite the pair in terms of such deluded belief in superiority that they pretty much overshadow the others, although the recognizable nature of the faces (except for Varsi, who is mostly known for her Academy Award-nominated debut in Peyton Place that appeared in eleven total films) that includes the sharp timing of Marshall or the attempts at making the Milner-Varsi dynamic anything other than just a footnote (look I don't really think about them in a film that sounds more like a Columbo prototype, so...). At any rate, what matters most in such queasy drama is the conviction laid out by Fleischer and company to make the drama matter as much as possible when it comes to making a dark act of murder come out to such a useful piece of fascination. It ranks well among the films of Fleischer and his varying skills for whatever genre he was sent out to do that makes for a useful film to watch today, whether one has a compulsion for the classics or not.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
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