Brennende Schuld

In 2017, Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci starred in a courtroom drama based on the same late 1930s legislation that is used for the manslaughter case in this Relph and Dearden message movies collaboration. The later film was based on a novel by popular writer Ian McEwan.

The theme is similar: the refusal of a blood transfusion based on a religious dogma. A difference is that in Life With Ruth, the onus for the decision fell on the father, whose eight year old girl was not yet of age to really understand the faith he had taught her and to make a decision for herself. Whereas in the later story the decision is made by a teenage boy on his own, though he is not yet an adult according to the law so is covered as a child.

In both films there is a subplot about a crumbling marriage though in the Emma Thompson film it is the lawyer's marriage that is affected.

The original Dearden film is an impressive piece of craftsmanship with black and white lensing by veteran Otto Heller, good supporting performances and well cast leads. My sympathies were on the side of the outraged doctor but the script is balanced enough to allow us to understand why the jury would acquit the father.

Though some of his best films (The Captive Heart, The Smallest Show On Earth, The League of Gentlemen, Khartoum) fall outside the rubric of the socially conscious message format, Dearden's work in that format far surpasses the comparable Hollywood contribution of someone like Stanley Kramer and can be better compared to the achievement of the French director Andre Cayatte.