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.

The supporting cast also includes John Williams; Henry Daniell and Ian Wolfe in fine fettle as Laughton’s associates.

Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture; Director; Actor (Laughton) and Supporting Actress (Lanchester), the stunning transfer is a perfect showcase for Kino Lorber’s first in a series of Blu-ray upgrades of United Artists classics from the 1950s-1970s.

Also new form Kino Lorber is the Blu-ray upgrade of Wilder’s 1970 film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Originally intended as a three hour film in which Holmes and Dr. Watson take on five cases, the finished film is a little over two hours and features just two cases. The first one involves a Russian ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) who wants Holmes (Robert Stephens) to father her child. He gets out of it by claiming to be gay to the consternation of Watson (Colin Blakely). The second one involves a case of amnesia; German spies; the Loch Ness monster; a submarine and Queen Victoria.

Stephens and Blakely make a formidable team, assisted by Genevieve Page as the femme fatale; Christopher Lee as Sherlock’s brother Mycroft and Irene Handl as Mrs. Hudson. Stanley Holloway and Catherine Lacey have cameos. Wilder, who had previously earned 21 Oscar nominations and 6 wins received none for this film. Neither was the film nominated for anything else, marking the beginning of the end of Wilder’s reign as one of Hollywood’s greatest directors and awards magnets.

Extras include Christopher Lee’s reminiscences imported from the 2003 DVD release of the film.

New from Olive Films is the first DVD and Blu-ray release of Forever Female featuring Wilder favorite William Holden in a film he made, along with three others, between Wilder’s back-to-back films, Stalag 17, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar, and Sabrina.

Released in early 1953, directed by Bette Davis’ frequent director, Irving Rapper (Now, Voyager; The Corn Is Green) and made just two years after Davis’ greatest film, All About Eve, Forever Female is a curious re-working of the themes of that film told from the perspective of the playwright (Holden) in a role reminiscent of his character in Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard.

Holden plays an aspiring playwright whose play is bought by producer Paul Douglas as a vehicle for his forty-something wife (Ginger Rogers) who is cast as his play’s 19 year-old heroine. Obviously too old to play a 19 year-old, Rogers nevertheless thinks she can pull it off if she plays it as a 29 year-old. The play is a flop but becomes a hit when it is revived with twenty-something Pat Crowley as originally written and Rogers as her mother.

The success of the film relies heavily on the charm of the film’s four stars and they are all good although Rogers, who is no Bette Davis, is not convincing as a great theatre star in the early scenes. She is much better when she allows her naturally warm personality to take over in mid and late film.

James Gleason and Jesse White have recurring minor roles and Marjorie Rambeau has a blink and you’ll miss her cameo as a faded star jealous of Rogers’ success.

Among new films bowing on Blu-ray and standard DVD is Heaven Is for Real, based on a true story. Most critics found the film corny. It may be, but at least it’s not preachy.

A four year-old boy who had been close to death from a burst appendix tells his parents afterward that while on the operating table he met Jesus and visited Heaven which he describes as like Earth, only better. The child’s heart never stopped beating during the operation so it was either a near-death experience or an hallucination.

He tells his minister father that he saw his mother in another room calling people asking them to pray for him and his father in the chapel yelling at God. These things can be explained away as being typical of his parents’ reactions to others in similar situations, but when the boy later tells his father that he met his father’s grandfather never mentioned by his father, and his mother that he met his dead sister who his parents have never told him about, the parents take him seriously. These encounters, too, can be explained away as manifestations from discussions he may have overheard his parents having when they didn’t know he was listening and suppressed in his subconscious.

The film is not without humor, particularly in the scene where the boy asks the angels to sing his favorite song, Queen’s “We Will Rock You”.

Believe it or not, what you can believe is that the film provides two exceptionally fine performances from Greg Kinnear as the father and six year-old Connor Corum as the boy. Also in the cast are Kelly Reilly as the mother and Margo Martindale and Thomas Haden Church as church elders. Director Randall Wallace’s vision of Heaven as an extension of Kinnear’s church is a lot warmer than Terrence Malick’s minimal landscape in The Tree of Life.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray upgrades of Separate Tables and Marty.