A friend in Chicago insisted that someone I know and I order Counsellor At Law from Netflix immediately and tell him what we thought of it. So, we put it at the top of our queue. Last night, it arrived (for some reason the mail now gets to our place after 6pm). And we watched this 1933 William Wyler film version of Elmer Rice's Broadway play, starring John Barrymore and a very young Melvin Douglas, among others.Turns out that TV shows like Boston Legal and LA Law have nothing on early Hollywood depictions of the lives of officers of the court. John Barrymore does a memorable star turn as super-lawyer George Simon, whose fancy offices in the Empire State Building are a Grand Central Station of murder, infidelity, corruption, financial impropriety, communism, and blackmail--as well as love, loyalty, and success.
Elmer Rice was trained as a lawyer, and the realism of the script is obvious. The 80-minutes are so fast paced, it's a roller-coaster ride of laughs, suspense, and relief. Plus, the plot conflict pits John Barrymore's scrappy ethnic America --Jews, Italians & Irish--against snobby and prejudiced blue-bloods played by Doris Kenyon and Melvin Douglas.
They really don't make them like this anymore... 5 stars. (Amazing coincidence, it is distributed by the same company as my film: Kino International.)
