The Star Witness is an excellent example of the swift and incisive films that William Wellman made at Warner Brothers in the early sound era. There is a shooting in the street and the perpetrators come running through the Reeds house, threatening the family and. telling them not to talk. Then the father (Grant Mitchell) gets beaten up after he talks to the gruff D.A. (Walter Huston) and their very young son (Dickie Moore) is kidnapped on his way to play baseball. So the family refuses to testify, except for Gramps (Charles Sale), veteran of the Civil War who denounces the "foreign" gangsters and says Americans need to speak up. Gramps starts walking the streets, playing tunes on his fife, and when the captive Moore hears the familiar tune he throws a baseball out the window and, just in time, he is rescued and the killer is convicted. The film ends with Gramps back at the Soldiers Home, playing his fife as he passes by a cemetery.
Star Witness starts off with the written words "A neighborhood of plain people -- in an American city today" and Wellman and scenarist Lucien Hubbard pack a great deal into this 67-minute film: the heartbreak of Mrs. Reeds (Frances Starr) when her son is missing, comments about then-President Herbert Hoover, memories of the Civil War, the fear of foreign gangsters taking over American streets and towns, the passion of the D.A. to "give him the electric chair", the difficulties of finding a job and supporting a family in 1931, the popularity of baseball, the roles of faith and fate. Wellman and cinematographer James Van Trees use low-angles and traveling shots as well as narrow vertical images to give an idea of how quickly life can change and become disorienting.
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