The Accused is a 1949 crime drama about a woman who kills a man in self-defense. And then she must deal with her conscious and fears of being caught! As far as the film being classified as a film noir, it is a bit of a stretch and is more of a melodrama than a noir, but it does have a few noir touches but nothing in the league of Murder, My Sweet.
Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young, The Stranger, Along Came Jones) is a college professor who is sexual attacked by her student Bill Perry (Douglas Dick, Saigon, Rope) when he drives her to the beach after she misses her bus ride home. When Perry tries to rape Tuttle, she accidentally beats him to death with an auto part and dumps him in the ocean. She does a great job covering up her tracks by having Perry appear to have been killed while diving into the ocean over a cliff and landing on some rocks. The police, led by Lieutenant Ted Dorgan (Wendell Corey, Journey to the Seventh Planet) investigate Perry’s death. Wilma realizes that she’ll never be able to escape her conscience, and everything will eventually catch up to her, especially when she falls in love with Warren Ford (Robert Cummings, Saboteur, The Chase), who was Perry’s guardian. She does her best to hide the truth from Ford and Dorgan, but it’s just a matter of time before the truth will come out.
The Accused is a great noir with plenty of atmosphere, superb performances by the cast and fluid direction by William Dieterle. For those who are on the fence about this movie, it is more than worth a blind buy!
Finally receiving a Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, William Dieterle’s The Accused looks marvelous with a nice polished transfer throughout. Greys are balanced and the black and white transfer is crisp with superb shadow detail. The scenery is rich in detail with the cinematography by Milton R. Krasner looking better than ever. Very little to no issues with the master, other than a few age-old issues like speckles.
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack is clear with dialogue and music by Victor Young coming in perfectly. Nothing sounded too aggressive, here. Just a nice, solid audio track. No issues such as hissing, or crackling were detected.There are optional English subtitles for this release.
The Blu-ray of The Accused has an audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller who shares a wealth of information about the film and the actors. The other extra are trailers for other Kino Lorber The Accused, The Web, I’ll Be Seeing You, Night Has A Thousand Eyes, The Female Animal and Portrait of Jennie.
This is a solid release from Kino Lorber with excellent audio and video quality to go with a commentary. I can easily recommend The Accused!
The Accused
Director- William Dieterle
Cast- Loretta Young, Robert Cummings, Wendell Corey
Country of Origin- US
Distributor – Kino Lorber
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date – 12/11/2021