Four American soldiers based in West Germany are arrested and charged with the rape of a local teenage girl, a charge which under military law carries the death penalty. Major Stephen Garrett, an Army lawyer, is assigned to defend them. Garrett holds out little hope of an acquittal- the men are too obviously guilty for that- but when his offer of a plea bargain is rejected by the prosecutor he conducts an aggressive defence in an effort to save their lives. The film's title refers to the attitude of the townspeople. One might have thought that in a situation like this they would take the girl's side and be "without pity" for the accused men, but in fact many of them are ready to believe the worst of the girl, Karin, largely because her father, the self-important local bank manager, is not a popular figure in the town.
I watched the film when it was shown on television recently for two reasons. Firstly, because I have long been an admirer of its main star, Kirk Douglas. Secondly, because I am myself a lawyer by profession and was interested in the legal issues it raises. Indeed, it possibly raises more legal issues than can comfortably be dealt with in one film. Among these are:-
1. Is it right that American servicemen should enjoy the privilege of "extraterritoriality", that is to say the right of being tried by an American military tribunal for crimes committed against local people, rather than having to face a normal German criminal court? The risk of such an arrangement is that local people will lack confidence in the integrity of the proceedings, believing that American soldiers will always believe the word of one of their own over that of a foreign civilian. (Contrary to what some have stated, West Germany was not "occupied territory" in 1960; German sovereignty was re-established in 1955, following which American forces were in the country as NATO allies rather than occupiers).
2. Conversely, is it right that a military court should have the power to pass harsher sentences than those which would be available to a civilian court trying the same crime? West Germany had abolished the death penalty, even for murder, prior to the time this film is set,
3. Should a lawyer be able to override the wishes of his client in the way Garrett does here? When one of the accused, Private Larkin, attempts to plead guilty, Garrett brusquely overrules him and insists that a "not guilty" plea be entered. Later, without his client's knowledge or permission, Garrett attempts to call medical evidence showing that Larkin is impotent, only for the tactic to backfire when Larkin indignantly denies his impotence to the court. (In any case, even if Larkin had not taken part in the rape himself, he could still be convicted as a "secondary party" if he had aided or encouraged the others to do so).
4. Most importantly, should a lawyer in a rape case be permitted to cross-examine a witness in the brutal way shown here? Garrett's strategy is to try to humiliate Karin and to destroy her reputation, not in order to vindicate his clients' innocence but to try and force her to withdraw from the trial, thus ensuring that the court cannot pass the death sentence. As we are to see, however, this strategy is also to backfire badly.
This is not one of Douglas' greatest films, but he gives a competent enough performance as Garrett. He is not motivated by a belief in his clients' innocence or by any ideological opposition to the death penalty; Douglas rather plays him as a man who has been given a job to do and is determined to do it as well as he can, regardless of his own personal inclinations. (Personally, his sympathies seem to be more with Karin than with his clients). Another feature of the film is the title song, which became a hit for Gene Pitney and which serves as the main theme in Dimitri Tiomkin's jazz-style score.
The main problem with the film is that it is essentially an "issue move" with too many issues. It is an issue move about rape, and about the way in which the court system deals with rape, but it is also an issue movie about the death penalty, and about military justice, and about American- German relations during the Cold War, but the attempt do deal with all these issues together rather middies the water and it never makes a really clear statement about any of them. 6/10
Some goofs. At the beginning of the film we are told that Karin's boyfriend Frank is 19, but near the end of the film, only a few weeks later, he talks about money given to him by his father for his 21st birthday. The design of the American flag in the courtroom (50 stars, in five rows of ten) is completely wrong. The current 50-star design was approved by Presidential proclamation in 1959 and formally adopted on 4th July 1960. Given that the novel on which this film was based was not published until 1960, which means that production of the film could not have started until after the new design was publicly known, I am at a loss to explain this error.
