The Last Witness

Dec 30, 1960

1h 42m

★ 6.2

Overview

Director Wolfgang Staudte who left East Germany in 1953 to make movies in West Germany, takes a few swipes at the West German judicial system in this fairly effective courtroom drama about the murder of a four-month-old baby. Police almost immediately arrest the mother Ingrid who is the mistress of the father, a rich business VIP married to another woman. His position and wealth keep him insulated from suspicion. A hot-shot lawyer has to overcome the unaccountably biased perceptions of the police, the judge, the prosecutor and almost everyone else in the judicial system. The defence lawyer, driven to an extreme, knows he has to find the real killer or his client will be convicted.

Genres

Crime

Drama

Production Companies

Kurt Ulrich Filmproduktion

The Last Witness Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Direktor Werner Rameil

Martin Held

Rechtsanwalt Dr. Fox

Hanns Lothar

Ingrid Bernhardy

Ellen Schwiers

Dr. Heinz Stephan

Jürgen Goslar

Gerda Rameil

Adelheid Seeck

Landgerichtsrat Ricker

Werner Hinz

Assessorin Ebeling

Lore Hartling

Kriminalinspektor Gerhuf

Siegfried Wischnewski

Kriminalsekretär Wenzel

Harald Juhnke

Anwalt Dr. Beyer

Otto Graf

Dr. Hollberg

Albert Bessler

Frau Bernhardy

Lucie Mannheim

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

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