Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

[b]IMPORTANT NOTE!
Due to a deplorable accident some tickets for the screening of ]]>Beyond a Reasonable Doubt]]> on October 10, 1 a.m. at Gartenbau cinema have been printed with a wrong beginning time. The screening is set at 1 a.m., NOT as wrongly indicated at 1:30 a.m.![/b]

Fritz Lang had an extraordinary mastery of European expressionism that allowed him to illustrate the state of a continent that gave rise to fascism, and to make an implicit critique of the «freedom» of American capitalism. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt illustrates that greatness perfectly. It is a film of great economy and precision, with the terrifying inevitability of Greek tragedy and a pervading sense that man is his own worst enemy. Dana Andrews plays a reporter who agrees to incriminate himself in a murder case because his editor is pursuing a campaign against capital punishment. They plant a lighter that was given to the reporter by his fiancee Susan and the reporter then poses for the photographs that will prove his innocence. Almost immediately Lang's long shot of the scene seems to suggest that things may go badly wrong. They do. (Derek Malcolm)