I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely Brilliant!

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I believe this was based on a very good book, but I found it convoluted and meandering. If you like movies of the 50's and courtroom dramas, you will enjoy this tale of race relations and the question of guilt or innocence of a young Mexican as it unfurls. I always found Glenn Ford a dull actor, so maybe *I* am the one prejudiced here. (and to be honest, movies with a one-word title - "Trial" - are seldom very good.) Just my opinion. Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy Maguire also star.

"Trial" stunned me. Set in the '40s, the story shows us how the descendants of the original slave owners, now the modern Jim Crow segregationists, began hiding behind Communist front groups and adopting social causes-- not out of a sense of remorse but only to give the themselves a veneer of respectability to avoid detection. Sound familiar? Since the end of WW2,these Marxist wannabees have been infiltrating academia, the media, and the entertainment industry in a combined effort to destroy the nation they hate by revisionist history and constant negative propaganda. Is it any wonder why liberals despise Senator Joe McCarthy so much? Dorothy McGuire's speech to Glenn Ford describing how she became a Communist "fellow traveler in college" could have been written by millions of today's campus snowflakes ... that is, IF they ever learned how to write a coherent sentence between riots.

Very good film showing how the Communist Party in the United States tried to exploit a case of where a young Mexican boy was accused of killing an American girl. It's all for the cause, even if it means that the Mexican, is put to death.What a year 1955 was for Glenn Ford. Besides this film, he made "Blackboard Jungle," and the equally wonderful "Interrupted Melody."Arthur Kennedy gained still another Oscar nomination, but always in a losing effort, as the lawyer who takes him in to defend the case, while Kennedy has an entirely different agenda.Dorothy McGuire, Kennedy's aide, falls for Ford and later informs him of her unwillingness to accept the party line.Just like "The Manchurian Candidate," this is a frightening film of subversion in the good old U.S.A. Of course, Katie Jurado is the mother of the accused and she rattles off that same emotion as she did a year earlier in her Oscar nominated "Broken Lance."

This very unsatisfying movie is really all over the place, just like the era that produced it. In that sense, it's an interesting document of its time, but not too fun to watch. It starts out as a typical corporate-liberal morality courtroom-crime movie, a' la Call Northside 777 or 12 Angry Men. But those movies were unequivocal about their direction -- they knew where they wanted to go and went right there. This one quickly loses its thread as it veers off course into 1950s anti-Communist paranoia-land. This movie isn't satisfied pointing out the dangers of the Communist 5th column that supposedly wanted to tear down our society and values. It doesn't even have faith in its own anti-Communism, posing the idea that 1950s ultra-leftism was bad because it was some kind moneymaking con. The plot about the far right ideologues who want to lynch the boy at the film's outset is forgotten about a third of the way through. The usually terrific Glenn Ford looks lost here -- his notion of moral confusion seems to be wandering around as if he has forgotten his lines. Maybe he's trying to figure out where the plot will go next? The film's final bizarre resolution is unrealistic, to say the least. We're supposed to be happy that the Mexican boy is only sentenced to a juvenile reform school instead of the electric chair. But the problem is -- is the boy a murderer or isn't he? If he's not (as the film seems to imply), why is it fair that he is punished at all? This is the American consensus view at its most confused. The final scene where the prosecutor stands up and agrees with the lenient sentence is the prize topper to this unlikely and directionless trial. This isn't the most far-fetched law movie -- I can't decide whether that honor belongs to the stupid "Suspect" starring Cher or the well-made "Boomerang!" with Dana Andrews. But it's certainly the most confusing -- guaranteed to appeal to the modern nativist right wing, who will probably think it's okay that a Mexican boy be sent to reform school for daring to set foot on an all-white beach or sit next to a white girl. (That'll teach 'em.) I should also mention the headache-inducing "edgy" bebop piano score, which seems to have been a staple of this type of movie in the 50s. It does have a few laughs, though these are unintentional. For example, listen to Dorothy McGuire's little soliloquy about how she turned Communist sympathizer during college -- she just wanted to be special! Weird, weird weird.