Web of Evidence (a.k.a. Beyond This Place) (1959)

Directed by Jack Cardiff; produced by Maxwell Setton and John R Sloan

Eighteen years after he was evacuated from wartime Liverpool as a boy, Paul Mathry (Van Johnson) returns to England to find his father (Bernard Lee). He discovers to his dismay that Patrick Mathry, whom he had believed a war-hero, was in fact convicted of murder, and has been in prison all the time. Immediately doubtful of his parent’s guilt, the younger Mathry embarks on the difficult task of proving his father innocent.

Last October, I reviewed on this blog 23 Paces to Baker Street, another Van Johnson thriller set in Britain, also with Vera Miles (who again plays the love-interest here). Both films use a tried and true premise for mystery/crime dramas: the earlier film was about somebody who overhears a crime being planned; Web of Evidence is about vindicating an innocent but imprisoned man. The first movie was entertaining and logical; the second is neither.

Though from a book by acclaimed author A J Cronin, the story in Web of Evidence is weak. So far as is related, Patrick Mathry was convicted on the most superficial of proof; I don’t think it could even amount to anything circumstantial: he visited the victim the night she was murdered. The audience may infer that Mathry and the dead woman were in an illicit relationship, but that is not brought up, either in regard to the trial or afterward, so it seems not to have been included in the evidence offered in court. Furthermore, since the offence was a capital crime, the evidence flimsy and the defence attorney apparently universally considered incompetent, there should have been at least an attempt at an appeal. None is mentioned.

Later, due to Paul Mathry’s escapades, which include breaking and entering, and assaulting a police officer, the Home Office considers a kind of release for the father – but this time, there is even less evidence for the legal action. The police detective in charge of the case (Moultrie Kelsall), though fanatical and unreasonable, nonetheless has a successful career behind him, and the attorney who prosecuted the case (Ralph Truman) is a favoured candidate for a parliamentary seat. Yet the government is eager to disregard both men’s authority and history to overturn Mathry’s imprisonment. This illogic hurts the credibility of the story.

(None of this really counts as a spoiler, as it doesn’t reveal the conclusion of the story or the killer’s identity – if indeed it is not Patrick Mathry.)

Added to the brittleness of some plot features is the relationship between Johnson’s character and Miles’s. Their love affair seems to have little basis in any attraction and more to do with the fact that it is expected.

The performances within these confines are good, particularly – as is often the case – the subsidiary characters. Anthony Newlands as a reporter and Leo McKern, in an early role, as his editor, do well. That’s Rosalie Crutchley as Paul’s mother in the initial scenes – she is much better known from her later years. Emlyn Williams’s character is two-dimensional (even more so in the movie’s later scenes), though his performance makes the most of it. As for Johnson, though he does well, he is miscast. The movie begins when Paul Mathry is about ten years old; eighteen additional years would have made him twenty-eight, thirty or so at the most. Johnson was forty-three at the time and couldn’t pass for much younger. Lee was but eight years older than Johnson, and the father-son scenario is not convincing.

Web of Evidence (an ironic title considering the ‘web’ is pretty flimsy) suffers from a script that turns an ordinary story into an unbelievable one, the crime abetted by equally unbelievable casting.