RKO Radio Pictures
Not part of a collection.
Winterset
A man is determined to find the real culprit behind the crime for which his father was wrongly executed.
- Original title
- Winterset
- Language
- EN
- Country
- US
- Budget
- —
- Revenue
- —
CinemaSerf
Aug 7, 2025 · via TMDB
I thought Burgess Meredith turned in quite a characterful performance in this otherwise rather dry drama. He is “Mio” whose late father we have already seen at the top of the film being condemned to the chair for his part in a robbery. Now, a generation later he is determined to prove that he was innocent. What quickly becomes apparent is that the investigation at the time was largely based around the “if your face fits” theory, and it doesn’t take “Mio” very long to get onto the trail of a far more likely culprit. Meantime, we also discover that a speech made by his dad upon sentencing declaring his innocence and warning the judge that his will be a sort of living death from now on has turned out to be eerily true. That judge (Edward Ellis) has indeed somewhat lost the plot, and is a ghost of his former self wandering the streets with little memory of who he is or was. It might well be that “Mio” could be in a position to salvage more than one should here? The plot clearly seeks to highlight the difficulties for the poverty stricken, slum-dwelling, population of the USA to not just get by in life, but to get a fair hearing from authority. That’s not just the court proceedings, but also far more rudimentary aspects of freedom. Even an assembly to dance attracts the police. Ultimately, though, it really does come down to a straightforward style of good and evil, and with the underplayed but effectively sinister effort from Eduardo Ciannelli and a really quite impactful one from Ellis, this can at times be quite a poignant evaluation. Alfred Santelli hasn’t done so much to creatively adapt it from the stage though, and that straight transfer to celluloid sees it lose quite a bit of it’s intensity. Even with the romantic attachment to “Miriamne” (Margo), much of the intimacy is gone, the dialogue is all too often delivered as if it were set-piece monologues, and none of the characters really come together until very near the end. Just taking it from the theatre to the cinema was always going to compromise some of the nuance, and though this is still a decent effort it just misses a little of the story’s soul.
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Burgess Meredith
Mio Romagna
Margo
Miriamne Esdras
Eduardo Ciannelli
Trock Estrella
Maurice Moscovitch
Esdras
John Carradine
Bartolomio Romagna
Edward Ellis
Judge Gaunt
Paul Guilfoyle
Garth Esdras
Stanley Ridges
Shadow
Mischa Auer
Radical
Willard Robertson
Policeman in the Square
Alec Craig
Hobo
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Carr
Helen Jerome Eddy
Maria Romagna
Barbara Pepper
Girl
Fernanda Eliscu
Piny
George Humbert
Tony aka Lucia
Paul Fix
Joe
Lucille Ball
Girl (uncredited)
Frank Mills
Witness to Paymaster's Murder (uncredited)
Van Nest Polglase
Art Direction
Alfred Santell
Director
Pandro S. Berman
Producer
Nathaniel Shilkret
Music
Maxwell Anderson
Author
Anthony Veiller
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Dec 3, 1936
