tbrittreid Review of Witness for the Prosecution

Witness for the Prosecution (1982 TV Movie)

Torpedoed by one piece of gross miscasting!

[6/10 · 10 July 2008]

I am amazed at the number of comments here faulting Sir Ralph Richardson's performance here and praising Dame Diana Rigg's. The situation is, if anything, the reverse. Admittedly, I hadn't seen the Billy Wilder cinema version for some years when I watched this, and therefore couldn't compare Sir Ralph's work to that of Charles Laughton (I haven't viewed this one since, either), but that isn't necessary to evaluate Rigg. She is totally miscast, in a way that is fatal to the twist ending (note the spoiler warning above, please). Unlike Marlene Dietrich, for Rigg the German accent is a complete affectation, while the cockney isn't that far from her own British speech pattern: vocally, she is quite recognizable as the other woman, at least to anyone familiar with her from other work--the fact that Rigg is kept in shadows in this scene (something that was unnecessary with Dietrich) would raise some vague suspicions of any uninitiated but reasonably intelligent viewer as well, even if her voice didn't give her away. But it does.