YOUR WITNESS

                 Robert Montgomery had been acting for nearly twenty years when he began personalizing his films. He had done well as a leading man in the 30s and, maybe because even from early on it was obvious he was worthy of diverse material, he was given a chance to go bad in Night Must Fall where he proved to be at his best playing maniacs in the guise of an all-American gent.

            But even the there was always something of a system outsider about Robert Montgomery. Perhaps his conservative politics in a town already functioning as the Mecca of the Left set him apart, but it seems more likely that he always believed in a different approach to storytelling than the studios offered.

            Tellingly, his first attempt to make a film his own (besides stepping in for a few scenes of They Were Expendable when John Ford fell ill during production) was an experiment. But Lady in the Lake remains regarded widely as an interesting failure, mostly by fans who felt cheated by the minimal shots of Montgomery offered by the point-of-view camera.

            M-G-M learned and was reluctant to let him play with their cameras again. But after watching him resign to two safe pictures for Universal (Ride the Pink Horse and Once More, My Darling), Warner Brothers allowed him to direct a modest picture at the studio branch in England.

            Though a conventional mystery tale in many respects, Your Witness (or Eye Witness, as it was released in the States) is a livelier thriller with more personality than most of the second-tier noirs released in America at the time. It’s set some years after the war and memories of combat still linger in the mind of Adam Heyward (Montgomery), now a brilliant New York lawyer. Early in the film he receives a telegram from England from the wife of a war buddy who saved his life in battle. Sam (Michael Ripper), his friend, has been jailed for murder and will be hanged unless it can be proven he acted in self-defense. To repay his debt, Heyward sets off for England to help his friend.

            Your Witness doesn’t dwell on post-war trauma. Rather, once Heyward reaches the crime scene, it hits the ground running and makes for an entertaining little yarn, forsaking genuine suspense for cross-cultural humor, taking some good-natured jabs at the British legal system along the way. Even scenes that would be the exciting parts of other thrillers (such as Heyward’s night chase of the mysterious bicyclist who he believes to be the witness who can prove Sam’s innocence) here provide more amusement than thrills.

            On its own unique terms, Your Witness is cheerful fun. Montgomery’s elegant humor turns Heyward into a naïve good sport, a bit taken aback by the peculiarities of the little village. Most of the humor, however, is at the Britons’ expense, especially the ineffectual police department in which no one in charge seems to be around when Heyward arrives.

            As writing Your Witness is an untidy effort with many ends hanging loose. For instance, when Heyward first arrives at the local inn and states his business for being there, the locals abruptly hush up and back off in discomfort. It suggests a version of the familiar town with a secret trope, but the opinion or gossips of the locals regarding the murder trail are never really addressed again.

            There is another inexplicable scene in which Heyward is introduced to the local clergyman who invites him to stay in the church once he must leave the inn. This is followed by an extended shot of the altar boys and the church choir during mass. Nothing of this sequence connects to anything else in the movie.

            Finally, after the trial is resolved, the movie foolishly attempts a heartwarmer for an ending, something it didn’t lead up to. The two characters involved, the widowed colonel Summerfield (Leslie Banks in his last film) and his neglected teenage daughter (Ann Stephens), were treated by the film so whimsically up to that point that any emotive revelation about them was bound to feel arbitrary. For all that, however, the conclusion is not quite the embarrassment it could have been, thanks largely to the strength of Stephens’s performance.

            Within the unruly structure, however, Montgomery and screenwriters Hugo Butler and Ian McLellan Hunter do some interesting things, especially in the treatment of the female leads. Noir isn’t typically very trusting of women; the genre that cultivated the femme fatale wouldn’t be. Interestingly, though, in the two that Montgomery directed, this and Lady in the Lake, the women ultimately prove trustworthy. Lady in the Lake, of course, came from Raymond Chandler who often thought of his female leads as valuable partners.

In Your Witness, it’s Sam’s wife Mary (Jenny Laird) who summons Heyward and initiates her husband’s defense. But the one who truly defies expectations is Alex (Patricia Cutts), the Colonel’s widowed sister-in-law who serves as Heyward’s keys to the town. From the first encounter she seems destined to be the love interest and does follow through, but when Heyward learns that the murdered man was a known womanizer and had a lady in his shed at the time of the murder that then fled the scene, Alex becomes the suspected missing witness who can testify Sam acted in self-defense. Unaware that she is under a cloud of suspicion unknowingly proves her innocence in a manner inverted from Crossfire; she cannot find the room where the killing took place. Her ignorance as to the location of the room that the witness would have recognized clears her and enables her to walk away with Heyward in the closing shot. She is spared the humiliation of begging the lead for forgiveness or confessing to a past indiscretion. She never owes an apology and stands tall.

Having served as a Navy lieutenant commander during WWII and dedicating much of his later career both in movies (directing and narrating The Gallant Hours) and then television (Navy Log) to the chronicling of the war, it’s surprising he didn’t make the murder the result of Sam’s post-traumatic stress or make Heyward more of a haunted veteran. Indeed, for a soldier almost killed in action, Heyward seems strangely unphased. Ultimately, the resolution has little to do with Sam, Heyward, the dead man, or even the relation between them. Its premise comes down to simply finding the crucial witness.

Your Witness isn’t a profound mystery and doesn’t even touch the prospect of psychological depth. But it’s fun and played fancifully. It would be the last time Montgomery would appear on the big screen (he only narrated The Gallant Hours), turning his attention to his now forgotten series Robert Montgomery Presents and Navy Log, and work in Washington as Eisenhower’s image consultant.