The Verdict

His first feature in the director’s chair, Don Siegel’s The Verdict has little in common with Siegel’s rough, brutal noirs in the American West later in the cycle. A beautifully crafted and relatively cozy murder mystery set in foggy Victorian London, The Verdict stars Sydney Greenstreet as Scotland Yard Superintendent George Edward Grodman, who’s fired and replaced by his competitor, John Buckley (George Coulouris), after it’s discovered that a recently executed man whom Grodman had convicted for murder was innocent after all. With the support of his dedicated best friend, the macabre artist Victor Emmric (Peter Lorre), Grodman proceeds in secret to investigate the subsequent murder of the first victim’s nephew in a perhaps misguided attempt at vindication. Soupy fog and glowing gaslight create an oppressive Gothic atmosphere with little daylight for relief, while much of the suspense occurs in a boarding house populated by secondary characters, notably Vicky Benson, a screeching dowager played for tremendous fun by Rosalind Ivan. The doleful peal of church bells opens and closes the film, perhaps reminding us that despite the machinations of law and justice, the bell will toll for thee.