Produced under the Nazi regime, Werner Klingler’s Der Verteidiger hat das Wort (US: The Defense Attorney) is a fairly conventional mystery noir made memorable by the depiction of a judge-turned-detective by its star, the jolly Heinrich George, who also produced the film. George plays the revered Judge Jordan, who is particularly happy because his only daughter Gisela (Carla Rust) is about to be married to an upstanding young jeweler named Günther Fabian (Rudolf Furnau). The celebratory spirit takes a nosedive, however, when two detectives show up to arrest Fabian for the murder of nightclub dancer Ria Nora (Margit Symo) a few hours earlier just after she performed on stage with a singing voice clearly intended to imitate Marlene Dietrich. Unknown to both Jordan and Gisela, it seems Nora was Fabian’s former wife, and he had been placed not only at the scene of the crime but in her company in recent days. While Fabian awaits his fate in prison, Gisela’s unwavering trust in her fiancé’s innocence persuades the otherwise skeptical judge to investigate the case on his own, which he does with Hercule Poirot aplomb, including a final mental re-enactment of the crime that satisfies. Eschewing violence, perhaps due to censorship rules, Klingler instead lets George’s dramatic heft anchor the film, his frustration at each turn brought effectively to life through unusual editing techniques like composite shots and cross-cutting when the judge is on the threshold of his next eureka moment, especially around that damned window pane.