Trial and Error (aka The Dock Brief)
by James Hill

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DVD Reviews of Trial and Error (aka The Dock Brief)

DVD Review: Alarmingly weak
Summary: 2 Stars

DVD Review: Humor in the first degree
Summary: 4 Stars

DVD Review: SUPERBLY, ABSURDLY, VIDEO POETRY!
Summary: 5 Stars

Like the Budda who knew the drink was poisoned but drank it anyhow to keep from hurting his hosts feelings, you need to drink this brew every time you think that you are losing your sanity. After watching the antics of Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough you will realize that questioning your sanity is the first sane thing that you have ever done.

Black and white is truly the only color medium for this darkest of messages. We are confronted by dark choices in this world-between buying into the world like Morganhall and Mrs. Fowle or retreating into parakeeting. Fowle the wifemurderer is the hero of this fine movie and when Morgenhall(Peter Sellers) asks if he will marry again in the hope that he will kill his second wife and thus give him his second serious case, while rolling on the floor in laughter,we cannot but see into our own dark hearts.

Mr. Mortimer has given us one of the finest movies ever made.He dazzles us gradually with the truth as Emily Dickenson admonished us to do in "The Belle of Amherst."We are not blinded by this revelation but supremely entertained.The scenes where Morganhall and Fowle prepare the various defense scenarios are some of the most precious in movie history. Here the murderer plays the murderer, his own judge, and his own jury.He has already become his own executioner when he closed his eyes and chose Sellers to become his advocate. To the tantalizing music of "tradition" they test the possible defense scenarios. Our world is an imagined world, and this movie is more about the imprisoning imagination than about the liberator by the same name.

I am reminded of another movie called "Rhinocerous" where Gene Wilder plays the only human left in a world of people all turned Rhinocerous.When confronted with this bewildering choice between Rhinocerocity and humanity he is afloat in the same existential dilemna as Fowle. The question remains: To whom will they turn the next time they need a defender? Hopefully, not to Morgenhall the lawyer!

DVD Review: Disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars

DVD Review: Amusing and touching
Summary: 3 Stars

The quiet man (Fowle) is played by Richard Attenborough and the barrister (Morganhall) by Peter Sellers. Both give great performances, as does Beryl Reid as Mrs. Fowle, shrieking with laughter at the dumbest jokes on the radio (the two cannot afford a 'telly'). In flashbacks that deliberately recall A Christmas Carol, each man shows the other the past circumstances that brought him to his meeting of the other man. For Morganhall, it's the years of study and many more years of waiting for a case to arrive at his doorstep. For Fowle, it's the years of living with his raucous wife, during which time he retreats to the quiet life that raising budgies (parakeets) offers him.

This is not a great film, or a major one, but it is well made and written, and very intelligent. It certainly recalls the famous statement, Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. In this film, the two major characters are both quiet and desperate. The smart humor that graces the film gives it a unique tone that serves the story well.

Description of Trial and Error (aka The Dock Brief)

General DVDs

• Genres > Art House & International
• By Country > British Cinema > Comedy
• General
• Comedy > General
• Satire
• By Theme > Nothing Goes Right
• Classic Comedies
• Comedy Stars > Peter Sellers