Awards & Honors
Witness for the Prosecution received Oscar® nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Laughton), Best Supporting Actress (Lanchester), Best Editing (Daniel Mandell), Best Sound (Gordon Sawyer). It didn't win in any category.
Elsa Lanchester won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
Ironically, Charles Laughton, who was born and raised in England, was nominated as Best Foreign Actor by the British Academy Awards.
The film also scored an Edgar Allen Poe Award Best Picture nomination for the screenplay.
The Critics' Corner
"For a courtroom melodrama pegged to a single plot device a device that, of course, everybody promises not to reveal Witness for the Prosecution comes off extraordinarily well. ... Mr. Laughton adds a wealth of comical by-play to his bag of courtroom tricks. A certain famous British Prime Minister has plainly inspired his artful airs and gravelly voice. And Miss Lanchester is delicious as that maidenly henpecking nurse."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, February 7, 1958.
"Power does a winning job as the ingratiating defendant who seems incapable of murder, and Miss Dietrich is in good form, histrionically and physically, as the cause of much bafflement through the picture until the explanations are finally given."
- Variety, December 4, 1957.
"There is no courtroom drama more enjoyable than this adaptation of Agatha Christie's play. ... The most fun comes from trying to figure out if the obvious overacting by the defendant and witnesses is being done by the actors or the characters they're portraying. The picture is well cast."
- Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic (Simon & Schuster, 1986).
"Dietrich is magnificent in her role as 'wife of the accused' in Billy Wilder's intelligent adaptation of Agatha Christie's stage play. As a German emigré, much of the character's background could be scenes from Dietrich's own life (including the classic Berlin cabaret flashback). This added plausibility adds to the melee of plots surrounding this pacey and witty courtroom drama."
- Matthew White, Edinburgh University Film Society program, 199394.
By Rob Nixon
