Between 1941 and 1946, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre starred in nine different films together. Their first pairing was The Maltese Falcon (which, amazingly, was the first time Greenstreet, at the age of 61, had ever appeared in film). Their next film was Casablanca, which is one heck of a one-two punch; it is no wonder Warner Brothers (where both actors were under contract) kept putting them in films together.
Buy The VerdictThe Verdict was their last film together. It was also the first film directed by Don Siegel, better known for his tough, cynical action films like The Killers and Dirty Harry. The Verdict is nothing like those films. It is a period piece. A murder mystery. It has some great fog-infused, noir lighting, and some amazing sets of London.
Greenstreet plays Superintendent George Grodman, one of the head men at Scotland Yard. The film begins with him pacing outside Newgate Prison, where a man he convicted of murder is about to be hanged. Not long after that deed is done, Grodman’s rival, John Buckley (George Coulouris), appears, and with him, the Reverend Hoffman, who could have served as a witness for the defense. He says he was with the recently executed at the time the murder and thus the hanged man was innocent. The convicted man spoke of this reverend as his alibi, but Hoffman was nowhere to be found at the time. He was in New South Wales, Australia, not Wales, the country that is part of the United Kingdom, where Grodman searched for him.
This mistake becomes a scandal, and Grodman loses his job over it. Buckley immediately takes his place, but before Grodman can get too upset over this, there is a murder right in his neighborhood. Arthur Kendall is found stabbed inside his sealed apartment. It is a perfect locked-room mystery.
Before the murder, the film sets up a number of good suspects – people who hate Kendall for one reason or another. This includes Clive Russell (Paul Cavanagh) an MP who, the night of Kendall’s murder, argued with him strongly over the way he treats his employees; and Lottie Rawson (Joan Lorring), a dance hall girl and Kendall’s secret lover, was also seen having a row with the deceased not long before he was killed. Naturally, our suspicions fall on Grodman’s friend Victor Emmric (Peter Lorre), and Lorre was so good at playing devilish characters.
Truth be told, the mystery in this film is rather dull. We’re never given any reason to care for the dead man, so his murder feels perfunctory. The locked-room aspect is interesting, but the film doesn’t do much with it. A couple of possible solutions are tossed out, but the film is less interested in solving how it was done and more interested in giving us suspects. I pretty quickly landed on who the real killer was, though I will admit the film did a good job of making me doubt my suspicions by leading us to other possible solutions.
But really, I was never all that interested in “who done it?” It is always fun to watch Greenstreet and Lorre working together. Neither is at their best here, but I can’t complain too much. Joan Lorring is having a hoot as Lottie, and Rosalind Ivan is quite good as Mrs. Benson, Russell’s nosy landlady who keeps waking Grodman up in the middle of the night with one problem after the other.
Had I not been paying attention to the credits, I’d be surprised to learn that Don Siegel directed this. It doesn’t feel like one of his films. He handles the material well, but it doesn’t have that tightness in its script and editing, or the dirty action I’m used to in his movies. But it does look magnificent. Cinematographer Ernest Haller imbues the film with noir shadows and light. Exteriors are filled with creeping fog, making the film look eerie and beautiful.
Warner Archive has given The Verdict a new transfer scanned in 4K from the original nitrate negatives. It looks clean and crisp. Those fog-lit London streets are stunning. Extras include two Looney Tunes shorts (Hare-Raising Hare and Birth of a Notion) and three radio dramas starring Lorre and Greenstreet, (Inner Sanctum – “Black Sea Gull,” Suspense – “Till Death Do Us Part,” and New Adventures of Nero Wolf – “Stamped for Murder”).
The Verdict isn’t a great film, but it is well worth the purchase for getting to watch Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet work together one last time. Not to mention watching Don Siegel try directing for the first time and the stunning cinematography.
