The Judge (1949) User Reviews

The Judge -- Pilot for a Series That Never Was?

[CatherineYronwode · 6/10 · 30 September 2019]

This is a freakish movie, and it plays a bit like the old radio series "The Whistler."

(Remember that one? "I am the Whistler -- and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.")

In this case, instead of The Whistler, we have "The Judge," who opens up his file cabinet of past cases, narrates some opening psychobabble about human minds, and lets us witness first hand the sordid horrors of human psychiatric neurosis, complete with a woozy flashback scene, more casual gun-handling than i have seen outside of a Western, and an acapella choir that sounds like it swallowed a theramin.

And what about Milburn Stone? Wow! Doc Adams on TV's "Gunsmoke" surely deserves kudos for playing firmly against type here. as a man so unexpectedly motivated that to say anything more about his intentions would be to ruin the experience of watching the looks on his face shift with almost every line he delivers.

If this had been a pilot for a very weird short-run TV series, it would have become a cult classic. As it is, it is just straight-out bizarre.

By the way, i'll bet you dollars to donuts that the dog in the opening scenes was trained by Frank Inn, uncredited. It's a larger "Benji" type terrier-shaggy cross, and the stunt is set up exactly like all of Inn's best work with Higgins and his other dogs: The dog has a whole routine or scene memorized, and pulls it off in a nice, long take without ever once looking at the trainer for instructions. Good job, Anonymous Dog! Good job, Frank Inn!

The redemption of an unscrupulous shyster

[sol1218 · 7/10 · 15 August 2008]

**SPOILERS** Very penetrating study of an amoral and sleazy defense lawyer who suddenly got religious when he found out that his equally sleazy wife was cheating on him as well as the similarities he had in life with one of his clients.

From the files of the honorable Judge Allan J. Brooks, Jonathan Hale, we get to see the story of Attorney Martin Strang, Milburn Stone, and the life he lead that in the end made him realize what a low down rotten swine he really was. Strang had gotten off accused murderer James Tilton, Norman Budd, on a technically the year before only to have him murder a young violinist Tony, Al Rosman, and his pet dog. Tilton murdered Tony, a crippled 11 year old boy, because was was driving him, his next door neighbor, crazy with his violin playing.

Called by Tilton to be his defense attorney Strang who tried to get Tilton off on an insanity defense was stymied when the court psychiatrist Dr. James Anderson, Stanley Waxman, determined that Tilton was perfectly sane when he murdered Tony. What really struck Strang was the fact that Tilton had a brother whom he greatly disliked like he himself did. This was the same situation a young Attorney Strang found himself in with his younger brother whom he, after having him disbarred from practicing law, drove to commit suicide!

It was later when Strang secretly caught his wife Lucille, Katherine DeMill, having an affair with the court psychiatrist Dr. Anderson that he got the idea to reform himself from his life of legalized crime and repent to all those, the victims of the people he got off in court, he hurt over the years! Planning to both cut his wife completely out of his will and set up her lover Dr. Anderson in a future murder that he so meticulously orchestrated Strang was going to right all the wrongs he committed, in getting murderers off, over the years.

***SPOILER ALERT*** The plan that Strang put into motion ended up working to perfection with the biggest surprise, to everyone involved including the movie audience, being in him, attorney Strang, ending up as the murder victim!

Very complicated story about one's redemption at the price of his own life. Strange's shoddy past had finally caught up with him in both the murder of Tony by a client of his, James Tilton, whom he got off on a previous murder charge and his sanctimonious wife cheating on him. But what I feel was the real tipping point in Strang's sudden conversion was his kid brother that he drove to kill himself years before. It was Strang's brothers tragic death coupled with the fact of him realizing how many lives he destroyed in his sleazy tactics in court that finally made him see the light!

P.S In a last act of contrition Strang left his entire estate, valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the families of the victims of the defendants he so skillfully and dishonestly got off.

See Evil, Do Ambitious Evil

[tedg · 2 May 2011]

I usually seek out detective movies from the early 30s because this is before the film narrative found short cuts and experimentation was the norm. After "Kane," the narrative stance changed, and while novel forms got more radical, they are harder to find.

This is a gem of that kind, nominally a detective movie of the earlier kind. It is set in the early 30s. Superficially, it is a simple story of how a smart man frames his wife's lover for his own murder, but the form is quite complex.

There is an outer wrapper: the narrator is a judge, and the focus a lawyer who appears before him, successfully defending guilty murderers. Before the core story happens, we are also put into the role of a judge as we witness an introductory story that establishes not only the characters and their situations, but where we fit is as well.

The judge respects the lawyer but is repelled by his success at using "tricks." Involved in the pre-story is an "alienist" who judges the sanity of defendants. Using our anachronistic perspective, we watch as we learn that the lawyer's wife judges her husband as inadequate, and this is why he has sold his brilliance to the guilty.

Everybody in this story is a judge, and there is a deliberate merging of passive watching with actively manipulating the story, noir-wise.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 9 January 2014]

Yikes! As is typical with Alpha Video releases, the DVD copy for this one is pretty awful. It's very fuzzy and the sound very poor due to a loud hiss. While I am thrilled that Alpha brings out many B-movies which would otherwise never come out on DVD, the discs have never been restored in any way and it looks and sounds that way.

Milburn Stone plays Martin Strang--a lawyer famous for defending some high-profile murderers. One day he realizes that his wife is cheating on him and concocts a complicated plan. However, Strang is clever and is willing to take his time with this one.

One day, William Jackson (Paul Guilfoyle) kills a cop and is up on murder charges. Surprisingly, Strang volunteers to take the case free of charge even though it seems like a sure loser. However, there is a catch--the obviously guilty man will pay for the service by doing Strang a favor. After getting an acquittal on a technicality, Strang announces the favor. What that favor is and how it relates to the wife is something you'll need to say for yourself.

Now all this probably sounds great, right? Well that's the problem. While the set up was good, the payoff was not. Even worse, much of the ending needed to be explained by the narrator!! Instead of a dandy ending came talking, talking and more talking both before and after this exposition. In addition, during much of this you hear one of the most annoying soundtracks in history--with a chorus blaring out 'oooooooooooooo' for what seems like an eternity! Overall, the longer I watched, the less I enjoyed the film. A film that had SOME good ideas but which was horribly written and cheap. Very disappointing.

poor

[blanche-2 · 4/10 · 28 November 2021]

I can't say too much about this film, "The Judge" from 1949. I saw a horrendous print, and I admit I found the story strange.

The movie stars Milburn Stone of Gunsmoke fame. I only know him from Gunsmoke, and I doubt I saw one episode all the way through. He plays attorney Martin Strang, known for taking high-profile cases and winning.

When he learns his wife is cheating on him, he comes up with a way to exact revenge. He approaches a cop killer, William Jackson (Paul Guilfoyle) and takes his case pro bono. However, he exacts a promise from Jackson, if he gets him off, he will ask for a favor in return.

Strang uses a loophole in the law so that Jackson's case is dismissed - temporarily. Jackson will not be indicted for killing a member of law enforcement, but he will be going down for murder. Before Jackson actually realizes this, Strang calls in the favor.

The rest was ridiculous and in fact, as is usual with a lousy script, the narrator had to explain the whole thing at the end. The only interesting thing to me was that the actor Stanley Waxman, who played Mrs. Strang's love interest, looked like Tyrone Power from a distance. The shape of the face, the hairline, the eyebrows. Up close he didn't look like him at all.

I am working off of a list of noirs. I have seen all of the famous ones. The rest of them have been a little disappointing. This was one.

quirky crime drama, well-acted by Milburn Stone

[django-1 · 8/10 · 6 July 2003]

One of the last films directed by the great Elmer Clifton, whose career dates back to the mid-teens and D.W.Griffith, The Judge was also the first production of Ida Lupino's production company, first called Emerald Productions, later called The Filmmakers.

This is a quirky film which is both hard-boiled and pretentious, raw and artsy. It is also a film that raises as many questions as it answers. Elements are introduced into the story, covered in detail, and then not developed. Dream sequences are introduced, but are unclear. The main character--who is a sleazy defense attorney, NOT a judge--is well-played by Milburn Stone, but his story is not really typical of anyone other than this one oddball character. Why the film is called THE JUDGE, I don't know. The show begins and ends with a judge pulling out a file from his file cabinet, and talking about what a unique and disturbing case this was. The same judge does rule on an important case in the film, but he is not central--one wonders why the film is not called THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY? While star Milburn Stone and some of the supporting actors give good performances, the doctor and Stone's wife are both amateurishly played. Also, no scored instrumental music is feature in the film: only avant-garde acapella choral music, and the wire recording of the violin practicing that is used to get the psycho killer to grab a gun, which is used later as supporting music. This gives the film an art-film feel. A few scenes were unclear and required me to rewind the tape and watch them two or three times. The scene where the guy selling the dolls picks someone's pocket--the guy who later kills a policeman and is blackmailed by Stone--was unclear. Where was that gun coming from? Is this sloppy continuity, or an attempt at being ambiguous? Who knows... When the film ends, somewhat abruptly I might add, the viewer will probably have a number of questions as we did. However, whatever minor flaws I may complain about, The Judge is a unique film experience. Not entirely successful, but unique nonetheless.

Heavy-Handed Crime Story

[boblipton · 4/10 · 13 May 2020]

The Judge is Jonathan Hale, who narrates this heavy-handed story about how defense attorney Milburn Stone gets Paul Guilfoyle off of a charge of murdering a police officer -- temporarily -- so he can play a game of Russian Roulette with him. It's a psychological drama, in which Stone and Guilfoyle are quite mad, for differing reasons

Elmer Clifton cowrote and directed this movie, and his long career in the movies explain the melodramatic rendering. They do not particularly explain the score by Gene Lanham, which consists of a choral effect, which tries to add gravitas to the goings-on. Everyone takes the performance very seriously, and while it may be all right, considering the anger which many people hold defense lawyers in, I found it fairly laughable, despite a good cast which includes Katherine Demille and everyone's favorite Perry White, John Hamilton.

unnerving and scary art-house starkness

[Cristi_Ciopron · 9/10 · 12 June 2016]

A drama with M. Stone (who again reminded me of both Wayne and Lemmon, with a distinctive trait of intelligence and lucidity), directed by Clifton, in the new austere style that has been taken up in the late '40s, and in fact it resembles many other tiny budget movies made in the late '40s and '50s, including the quirky script and gritty tone. It's also like a 'Twilight Zone' episode. The atmosphere is suitably boosted by an eerie score.

The movie is breathtakingly compelling; given its presumably tiny budget, it's an extravaganza in terms of ideas, with existentialist overtones like the scene of the straitjacket and the roulette (the red herring had been the previous suggestion that the lawyer planned to murder his unfaithful wife).

Stone plays a successful lawyer who has his own burden of a wrecked life; I was reminded of his supporting role in a drama made a decade earlier, about a merciless attorney. The other highlight is the bleak and unusual script, worthy of 'Twilight Zone', much more adult than M. Douglas rebelling in an exploitative early '90s movie once much acclaimed. This one isn't about a crisis, but about bleakness and nihilism. I liked the way Martin Strang dismissed his wife's explaining in the flashback scene.

There are some freakish traits of what some would call exploitation: the unfortunate boy, the serum, the killers themselves, the gambling.

The actress, De Mille's daughter, had the unflattering distinction of being chosen for her uncanny look.

Sometimes Film Preservation shouldn't be a thing.

[JoeB131 · 2/10 · 28 November 2020]

There were too many things going on in the plot of this movie, and you didn't really have time to follow them all. A sleazy defense lawyer finds out his wife is having a totally Hayes Code Non-sexual affair with a court psychologist. At the same time, a former client commits the murder of a handicapped child and his dog (Oh, no, not the dog!!!) He then engages in a very convoluted scheme to get himself killed and frame the doctor for the crime.

Something I am noticing in a lot of these Film Noir movies is just how absolutely incompetent the police are. Most of these plots are based on police not being able to effectively solve crimes.

Finally, the whole eponymous Judge. He's totally unimportant to the plot except as a narrator, and he has knowledge that he plain old shouldn't have at all. How would he know what the protagonist was dreaming right before he was killed?

Terrific little film from a bland director

[searchanddestroy-1 · 9/10 · 25 July 2022]

And also his last.... Yes, this scheme reminded me SO DARK THE NIGHT, where Steven Geray was a detective investigating on his own crime, the crime he commited himself. The story is not the same but the overall feeling for the audiences, who discover something unusual, different, is nearly the same. That's precisely what's interesting here, no cliché, nothing predictable. With Fritz Lang's BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT, the overall feeling for the audience is also close to this one; some court story so thrilling, exciting, because never seen before. Awesome ending too, to close a flat, bland director's career. Except his silent features. He died in anonymity.

Awkwardly Developed

[dougdoepke · 14 April 2017]

At first I thought this was a sleeper in the making. Those early scenes of lunatic Tilton (Budd) are grabbers, especially when he challenges Code by shooting a crippled boy and his dog! Moreover, his contrast with ice cold lawyer Strang (Stone) sets up real character color. So it's no surprise when we find out about Strang's utter lack of legal ethics. But inside the cold exterior, the lawyer's suffering pangs of conscience over the rogues he's gotten off. At the same time, his arrogant wife is two-timing him with his associate, the county doctor, of all people. Thus, despite his rigid demeanor, Strang's not altogether unsympathetic nor unconflicted. Also, director Clifton heightens this first half with some imaginative camera angles and close-ups suggesting a world where anything might happen.

Trouble is the second half bogs down in a lot of talk minus the earlier visual novelties. Though loaded with potential tension, the Russian roulette scene goes on too long and is drained by too much exposition, resulting in an action climax largely wasted. Then too, Strang's motivations behind his murder scheme are muddied up with all the talk that's not helped by an abrupt dream sequence. In short, the promising early part is undone by a awkward latter part. All in all, the movie raises interesting ideas but fails to effectively develop them.

(In passing—For fans of TV's Gunsmoke (1955-1975), it's enlightening to catch actor Stone playing a role opposite to his avuncular Doc Adams in TV's longest running western. However, if he smiled even once as lawyer Strang, I missed it. Anyway, a salute to that fine actor.)

Odds are good this one was highly praised in Sweden and Italy...

[horn-5 · 18 December 2006]

...or: Well, that explains that.

In the exhibitor's press book issued with this film, there is a half-page, two-column story under this headline: Balance of Symbolism and Reality Is Important Facet of "The Judge" There we learn..."the delicate balance between symbolism and reality is one of the most interesting features of 'The Judge." While symbolism is used freely throughout, it infiltrates, rather than intrudes itself upon the consciousness of the audience. Instead of becoming an object in itself, a showcase for trick camera angles and self-conscious dramatic shots, the symbolism in 'The Judge' is worked in gently, a subtle shading to intensify the characters and action it supports. While the effectiveness of symbolism is exploited, it is made to keep its place in the anatomy of the picture."

(Thank goodness for small favors.)

"...Wiliam Jackson (Paul Guilfoyle), a little guy who is pushed around, is first seen in the uncompromising sunlight of a middle-class park, against the sculptured background of struggling figures at the base of a statue. He is trapped in the wire cage of a tennis court, and tried against the bleak bareness of a courtroom. All these backgrounds build unobtrusively toward making his actions in the contrasting Apartment 29 natural and even inevitable. They are an unspoken comment on, and explanation of, his character."

(A nerd is a nerd is a nerd)

"PROPS REVEAL CHARACTER: The office of Dr. James Anderson (Stanley Waxman), with its neat files and carefully cataloged data on human emotions, its stern furniture and well-ordered arrangement, portray the cold mind of the psychiatrist. Lucille Strang (Katherine deMille) is seen against a haughty background that shows the deft, impersonal hand of a professional interior decorator, artistically lovely but without warmth, showing she has spent money but no love upon it---pointing up her brittle and unsentimental character."

(Some of us clods just thought the dame had swell taste.)

"The props, too, speak their piece. Inanimate objects become characters in the story---Jackson's tinkle-toy that is crushed by the foot of an unheeding ruffian---the wire-recorder in Anderson's office that taunts Tilton (Norman Budd)---the gun that Strang steals from Anderson."

This course in fundamental symbolism ends rather abruptly right there, as if the printer had had all he could take, and just inserted a still of the scowling, bow tie-wearing Paul Guilfoyle in place of setting the type for a third column. Too bad. Perhaps the third column explained just exactly what a tinkle-toy was. Maybe it was a bedpan constructed out of tinker-toys from an Erector Set.

Did the writers explain all this to director Elmer Clifton?