Accused of Murder (1956)

A film noir in color they're showing on the Criterion Channel. It was quite bad, I'm afraid, although it might be a lesson for young people that nothing good can come of talking to police. The Czechoslovakian emigre they suspect of the crime keeps telling the detective how much she trusts him and believes him when he tells her she doesn't need a lawyer.

A corrupt attorney is shot dead in his beautiful Lincoln Continental Mark II.

Wide screen. Mostly medium shot. It's a Republic picture and there were a lot takes where they did that old B movie thing where two people are speaking and they both face the camera, one closer to it than the other. It works very well.

Lee Van Cleef as a weirdly evil police sergeant who chuckles when he walks in on the lieutenant making out with a suspect. He and Elisha Cook were the only actors I recognized.

There was really no one to get behind. There was the woman who worked in a dance club who spotted the hitman given the task of murdering the victim. She tried to blackmail him but got drunk and went about it in a terribly unwise way. Just an old B movie except in color.