Town on Trial (1957)
Directed by John Guillermin

Film Review

John Mills is on cracking form in this taut mystery thriller, playing the kind of driven, slightly unorthodox crime investigator that would become endemic in police procedurals in the decades to come.  Plot-wise, Town on Trial is somewhat lacking (once you have eliminated the obvious suspects it's pretty clear who the killer is), but it is superbly well-cast and directed with considerable flair by John Guillermin, a stalwart of British cinema who would later go on to helm such popular classics as I Was Monty's Double (1958), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978).  Guillermin's penchant for dramatic tension serves him well (particularly in the nerve-racking climax) for what is assuredly one of his slickest and most compelling films.

Town on Trial may be a pretty conventional whodunit, but it is ahead of its time in at least two respects - it anticipates the psycho-thriller that would become highly popular after Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and flags up what has become a very real concern today: the extent to which the police should be permitted ride roughshod over the freedoms of the individual.  For its stylisation, the film takes some of its inspiration from American film noir, most visibly in its extensive use of point-of-view shots, which bring a potent aura of menace and foreboding.  The distinguished cast includes Charles Coburn, a well-known American character actor, no doubt brought in to help overseas sales of the film, and several familiar British faces - Derek Farr, Fay Compton and Dandy Nichols (the future long-suffering wife of Alf Garnett).  Town on Trial is a fine example of 1950s British thriller, and a genuine eye-opener for today's liberated teenagers.

Film Synopsis

Oakley Park is a small English town, a town that is like so many others - until the fateful day when a young woman is strangled on her way home one evening.  Investigating the murder, Superintendent Mike Halloran soon identifies four likely suspects.  First, there is Peter Crowley, the victim's former boyfriend, an educated young man who suffers from recurring headaches.   Then there is Dr Fenner, a Canadian medical practitioner who is keen to forget his past and who appears eager to incriminate others.  The influential Mr Dixon incriminates himself by the hostility with which he reacts to Halloran's line of questioning, but the most likely suspect is Mark Roper, a married man who was having an affair with the victim shortly before she died.  Halloran's methods soon arouse ill-feeling but the superintendent is determined to crack the case.  When another woman is murdered he realises it is only a matter of time before the killer will strike again...