The World Was His Jury (1958)

That was an excellent one.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The story revolves around a newly appointed captain who is on trial for manslaughter - 162 counts to be exact - after a fire breaks out on his ship and many are killed or disabled as a result. He is found guilty of gross negligence by a coast guard tribunal and handed over to the civilian courts for trial. Why do I ask "Why are we here?"? Because the captain is a new captain who takes over mid voyage upon the death of the actual captain. As a matter of fact, the new captain, Jerry Barrett, is in just the first few days of his command when the ship catches fire and sinks. He doesn't panic upon the discovery of the fire, but a blast in a stairwell makes him appear possibly drunk when he staggers onto the bridge, still dizzy from the blast. So much so that the second in command takes over until Barrett can regain his bearings. Too late though, because now his crew believes he was either drunk or just plain scared out of his wits.Yet in spite of the fact that everything was done that could be done to save the passengers, that Barrett stayed on board finishing up his duties after he told his crew to abandon ship, everybody wants his head on a platter. Couldn't it be that the dead captain, who had control of every inch of the ship until days before the fire had some culpability? Nobody ever brings this up.Edmond O'Brien is in fine form as the defense attorney, David Carson, apparently a five star attorney, just brimming with self confidence sprinkled with cynicism. How can Barrett afford him? The ship line for which he worked is footing the bill because if Barrett is acquitted it will save them millions in payouts in lawsuits over the disaster.What makes this one a little different? It shows the trial process in detail, and it makes a break with courtroom dramas of the past and enters the modern era. Like Perry Mason, Carson can't do it all himself, and he has his own P.I. who does the investigative work. It shows that corporations really do a cost analysis on the worth of human life, even sixty years ago, and then there is the lone nut with the gun that appears out of nowhere crazed with a desire for revenge. This is a good courtroom drama that ends somewhat predictably if you pay attention to the opening scene and the undercurrents of emotion of the crew, but there are some interesting twists and turns along the way. Watch it anyways, the journey is worth the rather predictable ending.

When a fire starts in the hold of the S.S. Paradise, the newly appointed Captain Barrett is hit on the head by some flying debris and when he comes to his manner and actions make his crew believe he has lost his nerve. Back on shore an official inquiry is launched into his actions. Edmond O'Brien plays hot shot lawyer Dave Carson who takes the case but comes up against a brick wall with Captain Barrett (Robert McQueeney) who just can't remember much about what happened. Slowly Carson starts to get a picture of an incompetent crew and a dogged conspiracy within the ranks of officers.I don't know whether my admiration for Edmond O'Brien's acting ability made me see this movie through rose coloured glasses but I didn't find it as "hard going" as the other reviewers. Sure some of the sets looked cheap but the superior acting of the cast (Mona Freeman as Robyn has a couple of scenes as a wife now fed up with her husband's grandstanding and low life clients) more than makes up for it.Witness after witness notes that Barrett, who was socializing at the ship's dinner just before the disaster, was groggy and unfocused and put it down to drunkeness. There also seems to be a cover up going on involving illegal immigrants posing as able bodied seamen who signed on at Port au Prince. After a sensational day in court involving murder and exposure, Carson wonders if Barrett is guilty after all - definitely of incompetence of judging the new crew.The courtroom sequence builds to a gripping climax and reveals the culprit to be Barrett's only supporter. Yes, there does seem to be similarities with Perry Mason (who in 1958 was giving TV viewers a glimpse of law and order and court room tactics) but O'Brien's very low key style helped to make the ending very suspenseful.

Courtroom dramas are tough to shoot with a big budget. Constrained, as they are, by location and focus, it is hard for them to be visually interesting. Given the obviously low budget of this movie, longtime B cinematographer Benjamin Kline can't do much here, although director Fred Sears and the script try to help out with fast editing, tight framing and long point-of-view shots --notice how when Edmond O'Brien is examining witnesses, there are frequently shots from the perspective of the District Attorney. The blocking is obvious and the scenes statics. Notice, for example, the early scene in which local children -- and reporters -- are hectoring the defendant's children.Given these technical issues, this movie starts under a handicap and despite O'Brien in the lead, never overcomes it. The movie looks like it is modeled on Perry Mason, including courtroom confessions, which may be fairly dramatic but is not the sort of thing that happens in the real world. All these issues make this movie substantially below par.

This was just a terrible turkey of a movie. Terrible low or no budget scenery, worse script. In order to pad this out to 81 minutes the script threw in some silly sub-plot of marital discord between Edmond O'Brien and his wife. She wanted to leave him because he had a record of one hundred and fourteen acquittals and his clients were all scum. The sets destroyed every possible illusion that this might be real; the inside of the bridge of the ship looked like a big room with two ship's wheels. In the first scene, six sailors walk in with a flag draped coffin and sit it up on sawhorses in front of the ship's wheels. The Captain died in some foreign port and now they are sitting his coffin up on the bridge? No explanation can make any sense out of this. Except for a couple of scenes in anonymous rooms and one action sequence, the entire rest of the movie is set in a courtroom, a courtroom run by rules made up by screen writers. This is a horrible waste of time, not even bad enough to be good.