Jean Kent has been murdered in her bedroom. Duncan Macrae and Joe Linnane conduct the investigation by speaking with the people around her.
The gimmick in this movie is that as each of the witness/suspects describes the events, we see it from the speaker's viewpoint... and the character, appearance and behavior of every individual changes according to whose version we are hearing. It's a subjective camera: not a new thing in the movies, but still a novelty. Three years earlier, Hitchcock had misused it in THE PARADINE CASE and the year this came out, Kurosawa directed RASHOMON which seems to assert there is no objective reality.
That's not what's happening here. The point is to take the subjective realities and winkle out the objective reality behind them. In the course of so doing, we get to see the actors perform their roles in a variety of manners, particularly Miss Kent, who ranges from slattern to aristocrat. In the US, this would have been a vehicle for the actress in the lead role looking for an Oscar. Look! I can do this line as a loose woman! Look, I can do it as as an impoverished noblewoman! And so forth.
The gimmick in this movie is that as each of the witness/suspects describes the events, we see it from the speaker's viewpoint... and the character, appearance and behavior of every individual changes according to whose version we are hearing. It's a subjective camera: not a new thing in the movies, but still a novelty. Three years earlier, Hitchcock had misused it in THE PARADINE CASE and the year this came out, Kurosawa directed RASHOMON which seems to assert there is no objective reality.
That's not what's happening here. The point is to take the subjective realities and winkle out the objective reality behind them. In the course of so doing, we get to see the actors perform their roles in a variety of manners, particularly Miss Kent, who ranges from slattern to aristocrat. In the US, this would have been a vehicle for the actress in the lead role looking for an Oscar. Look! I can do this line as a loose woman! Look, I can do it as as an impoverished noblewoman! And so forth.