Agatha Christie’s international stage success, Witness for the Prosecution is expanded and improved upon by Billy Wilder in his 1957 adaptation of Christie’s deliciously twisty murder mystery.

As explained to Volker Schlondorff by Wilder in an excellent 1982 interview that is included as extra on Kino Lorber’s magnificent new Blu-ray upgrade of the classic film, it was Marlene Dietrich who brought the project to the famed director. The legendary actress had been asked to do the film for United Artists, but would only agree to do it if her A Foreign Affair director came on board. Not content to be just a director for hire, Wilder and his writing partner, Harry Kurnitz, (Shadow of the Thin Man), added a part for co-star Charles Laughton’s wife, Elsa Lanchester, as well as a great deal of comedy not in the original play. It was Wilder who gave Laughton’s barrister his heart attack; the cigars hidden in his cane and the brandy hidden in his thermos for nurse Lanchester to find, which add even more twists to Christie’s brilliant ending.

Wilder and Kurnitz also wrote a flashback scene for Dietrich and top-billed Tyrone Power that showcased Dietrich’s famous legs, or at least one of them. The film was the last completed film for Power who died on the set of 1958’s Solomon and Sheba. It was also the last film for character actress Una O’Connor, the only player to repeat her Broadway role as the murdered woman’s housekeeper. The film reunites her with both Laughton and Lanchester. She was the twittering and hysterical Minnie to Lanchester’s The Bride of Frankenstein and Laughton’s shuffling maid in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and his foolish mother in This Land Is Mine.

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