Perfect Strangers

Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan serve on a sequestered jury during a murder trial. The two fall in love, despite his still being married and her separated. Combination courtroom drama and soap opera. The murder trial stuff is okay. Not 12 Angry Men but interesting enough. The soaper part is weak and drags the movie down. Predictable safe ending doesn't help. The selling point is the cast. Rogers and Morgan are both likable. The rest of the jurors are made of a variety of colorful characters. The standouts being Thelma Ritter, Anthony Ross, and Alan Reed (voice of Fred Flintstone). It's watchable enough but nothing special. Avid Ginger fans will appreciate it more than most.

This film is about a group of jurors who are sequestered during an important case. In the process, two of them (Dennis Morgan and Ginger Rogers) quickly fall in love--even though Morgan is still married! This illicit relationship is meant as a parallel to the murder trial, as the defendant was having an affair when his wife was murdered--making him the prime suspect. Aside from these two actors, Thelma Ritter and Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flintstone) are on the jury. Also, one of the witnesses in the trial is a young Frank Cady ('Sam Drucker' from "Green Acres")--who is apparently alive and well even today.

Aside from the Morgan-Rogers angle, the film is essentially a less tense nor as well acted film in the vein of "12 Angry Men". For example, a lady in the jury is projecting her hatred of her ex-husband onto the defendant--much like Lee J. Cobb directed his anger at his son on the defendant in "12 Angry Men". Overall, it's good, but nothing like "12 Angry Men" in quality and the affair angle seems to get in the way and was rather unnecessary--as well as a bit sappy--especially at the end. A decent time-passer but it just doesn't hit the mark.

The half-hearted romance plot between Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan takes away from an otherwise interesting ensemble piece about different people living together and the American jury system.

PERFECT STRANGERS is about a jury for a murder trial. In order to protect the integrity of the jury, the judge arranges for the twelve jurors to be held up in a hotel, cut-off from all outside contact, for the duration of the trial.

The film, based on a play co-written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, provides an interesting look at the life cycle of a jury, from the initial summons to the juror selection process to the trial and final deliberations. Like 12 ANGRY MEN (1957) it shows how jurors see things in different ways and how personal prejudice gets in the way of fair and balanced decision making. The movie also gives a humorous peek into the press room, where newspaper reporters scrape around for the scoop of the day (territory previously explored in THE FRONT PAGE and HIS GIRL_FRIDAY, also based on a Hecht/MacArthur play).

The movie doesn't delve very deeply into the courtroom proceedings or the facts of the murder case. The focus is instead on the jurors, twelve perfect strangers sharing a common experience over several weeks. The ensemble cast includes multiple Oscar-nominee Thelma Ritter and Alan Reed (the voice of Fred Flintstone), as well as Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, and others.

My favorite thing about the movie is seeing twelve perfect strangers from all walks of life forced to live together in a hotel suite. It's like going to camp. There are two women to a room, but the men have to double up (four to a room). They pass the time by playing cards, arguing about the trial, and (in Ginger's case) falling in love. They eat dinner together, they write messages for their loved ones at home, and they are chaperoned at all times by the bailiff.

I liked the idea of a sequestered jury ensemble, but the film puts too much emphasis on the romance arc between the Rogers and Morgan characters (a divorcée and a married man, respectively). And the romance is the weakest part. (Sure, they're both good-looking and trapped on a jury together, but can their "love" really work out?) The film has its moments, but falls short of its potential. It's still a classic "jury movie" and is worth checking out for Thelma Ritter fans and Ginger Rogers completists.

Some scintillating pre-credits footage of bureaucrats shuffling through card files of prospective jurors, and we're off on the world's least interesting murder trial, propelled by a baffling romance between jurors Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan. Both are still married, she's separated, and the movie doesn't seem to know how to treat the prospect of their getting together--we're supposed to want them to, yet also not to want them to, because of all the lives it would disrupt. Meantime, the rest of the jury appears to be the stupidest ever, led by Thelma Ritter, doing her usual welcome Tenth-Avenue-salt-of-the-earth thing, but with bad lines. Rogers, as was her wont at this stage of her career, is more glamorous than the woman she's playing, and one detects a large whiff of star vanity; Morgan looks understandably bored. The movie's unaccountably fascinated with the minor details of jury duty, and everyone on this panel is such an idiot that there's nothing to do but watch them jabber and spar and lead to their inevitable verdict. Bretaigne Windust's direction (now there's a name) is disinterested and uncinematic, but not even a Capra or a Sturges could have made anything of this script.

The plot may be mundane but the writing is good and the motley cast is superb and very entertaining. This is much more than a typical courtroom drama. In face the trial is more of a subplot.