Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT isn't a bad slice of 1950s crime and indeed it has one of those one-off story lines (like DOA) which is thoroughly intriguing. The film involves a crusading journalist, staunchly fighting against the death sentence, who decides to implicate himself in a murder case in a bid to expose flaws in the justice system. Inevitably it all goes wrong, with horrendous consequences for himself and his loved ones.The film is directed by Fritz Lang and is his last American movie, and you can sense his heart wasn't really in the material. The ending in particular feels tacked on and unbelievable. As a whole the film lacks the sense of mystery and atmosphere of the likes of WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and SCARLET STREET, but that's not to say it's bad; it just could have been even better.None of these things change the fact that the plot's a good 'un, even if there's one twist too many along the way. Dana Andrews makes for a solid and dependable leading man as always, and it's nice to see Joan Fontaine playing his love interest, even if she has little to do. Lang directs the various shock and drama scenes effectively and the courtroom spectacle is where this film comes to life, but something I can't quite put my finger on is lacking so I was left slightly disappointed.

In his last film in the USA before returning to Germany where he had left to escape the Nazis in the Thirties, Fritz Lang takes up the case of capital punishment and its application, especially when the case is a circumstantial one. Unlike the remake of Beyond A Reasonable Doubt with Jesse Metcalfe as the reporter and Michael Douglas as a corrupt District Attorney, both Sidney Blackmer as a newspaper publisher and Sheppard Strudwick as the politically ambitious DA hold each other in respect. Blackmer is not happy with Strudwick running up a string of murder convictions as a platform to be governor.He and prospective son-in-law Dana Andrews agree to frame Andrews with a string of manufactured evidence all carefully documented with photographs to have the police arrest him for murder of a burlesque queen that the police are stumped about. It certainly works all right, but as the case is coming to verdict, Blackmer is killed in an automobile accident and the evidence burn with him. Andrews is left in quite the jackpot.How it all works out is for you to see. Andrews is not abandoned by fiancé Joan Fontaine who is Blackmer's daughter. She does what she can and toward the end of the film her performance dominates.Fritz Lang certainly builds the tension worthy of Alfred Hitchcock himself. One scene did have me baffled. After the police have gotten those arranged clues, Andrews makes some moves on burlesque dancer Barbara Nichols who resists his advances. I could not quite believe that one at all.This original version is a notch or two above the Metcalfe/Douglas remake. Though it got an interesting alternative remake, this is still the one to see.

I have no trouble with the plot twists in this movie or the ending. The thing that amazes me is that the court system would have allowed a man who manipulated the law to just walk away, even if he were found innocent of the murder. He perpetrated fraud and used the justice system so he could write an expose. This just wouldn't happen. Otherwise it's a little like "The Witness for the Prosecution" where we think we've got it and the rug is pulled out from under us. Dana Andrews emotes and prances about, self righteous to a fault. Of course, with the movie codes of the day, there are issues that need to be addressed, especially at the conclusion. Then there is basic loyalty versus the law. These are all themes. For the most part it just doesn't work that well for me.

"Beyond A Reasonable Doubt" is the last film that "M" director Fritz Lang made in Hollywood, and the theme of this intriguing but far-fetched law and order thriller concerns the morality of capital punishment. Capital punishment, crime, and murder obsessed Lang throughout his lengthy career, and this RKO release provided Lang with another opportunity to deal with an innocent man who through a fluke in the justice system may die for a crime that he didn't commit.Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews of "The Ox-Bow Incident") is a former newspaper journalist turned novelist who agrees to test the strength of the justice system when his former boss, newspaper publisher Austin Spencer (Sidney Blackmer of "Duel in the Sun"), thinks that the local district attorney is too good at his trade. Spencer loathes the idea that an ambitious District Attorney Roy Thompson (Philip Bourneuf of "The Molly Maguires") will exploit his ability to send men to the electric chair as a means to becoming the next governor. When a burlesque queen is murdered, Tom and Austin proceed with their plan to implicate Tom for the homicide.Meanwhile, Austin's daughter Susan (Joan Fontaine of "Suspicion") does not understand this secret scheme that her father and Tom are concocting until she sees a picture of her fiancée in the newspaper with another woman Dolly Moore (Barbara Nichols), who stripped at the same club with the victim. Anyway, Tom buys a grey top-coat which a witness, who could not discern the facial features of the man, said he was wearing. Tom takes a lighter that Susan gave him and throws it in a ravine near where the girl died. Eventually, Thompson takes Tom into custody and charges him with the death of the stripper. The morning of the sentencing, Austin puts all the pictures in an envelop and backs out of his garage. No sooner has he backed out than a truck collides with him, knocks his car over, and a fire erupts. Austin dies in the car and the evidence goes up in smoke. Tom reacts with shock at the death of Austin. He goes into court and explains what happened, but the jury finds him guilty and he is sentenced to die in the electric chair.The two sizzling surprises that cap this nifty 80-minute melodrama will leave you reeling. The chief difference between this version and the new Michael Douglas version is that Lang did not have the elaborate technology the director Peter Hyams takes advantage of in his remake. Furthermore, the protagonists in the Lang version were targeting the death penalty and the ease with which Thompson won convictions on circumstantial evidence. In the Hyams version, the district attorney is crooked from the get-go. Unfortunately, this threadbare, black & white production will strike contemporary attention-deficit audiences that crave explosive action-fests as boring.