Circumstantial Evidence (1945 film)

Circumstantial Evidence

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Larkin
Produced by William Girard
Screenplay by Robert F. Metzler
Samuel Ornitz
Story by Sam Duncan
Nat Ferber
Starring Michael O'Shea
Lloyd Nolan
Music by David Buttolph
Cinematography Harry Jackson
Edited by Norman Colbert
Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox
Release dates
  • April 20, 1945 (1945-04-20) (United States)
Running time
68 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Circumstantial Evidence is a 1945 American film noir directed by John Larkin and starring Michael O'Shea, Lloyd Nolan, and Trudy Marshall.[1]

Plot

Three witnesses swear they saw Joe Reynolds murder grumpy baker Kenny (Ben Welden) with a hatchet. Joe claims Kenny's fatal head wound was the result of a fall as they argued—the baker hit his head on an oven as he fell—but the eyewitness testimony prevails and Joe is sentenced to death in the electric chair. His buddy Sam Lord has an uphill struggle to prove his innocence.

Cast

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther, the film critic for The New York Times panned the film, writing, "Darryl Zanuck must have had his back turned when Circumstantial Evidence slipped out the front gate of the Twentieth Century-Fox Studio. For a sillier and more tediously worked-out piece of crime melodrama than the picture which opened yesterday at the Rialto hasn't reached Broadway in a long, long time. Circumstantial Evidence is so full of hackneyed and incredible plot turns that one can never get even slightly interested in the involved set of circumstances which almost send a quite innocent, if belligerent, Michael O'Shea to the electric chair."[2]

References

  1. Circumstantial Evidence at the Internet Movie Database.
  2. Crowther, Bosley. The New York Times, film review, April 21, 1945. Last accessed: February 11, 2010.
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