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Valerie

1957, Movie, NR, 84 mins

Valerie: Review

A pretty contrived oater that takes the delicate structure of Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece RASHOMON (1951) and drives it right into the ground. The film opens at the trial of upstanding Civil War vet Hayden, who is being tried for the murder of his wife's parents and the attempted murder of Ekberg, his wife. As the evidence unfolds, the jury (and audience) are treated to three separate accounts of the events on that violent day. According to Ekberg's supposed lover, preacher Steel, Hayden had driven his poor wife away with months of abuse and cruelty. When she sought solace with the Lord, Steel took pity on her and brought her to her parents' home. Soon after, Hayden and his men arrived and slaughtered them. Hayden, however, testifies that his wife was a loose and wandering woman from the day they married, one who only married him for his money. He became enraged when he learned she had seduced his younger brother, Walker. In the end, it is the raspy testimony of Ekberg herself, who struggled out of her deathbed to relate the sad tale, that the jury believes. She states that Hayden had married her in order to get at her lucrative dowry. She contends that he had invented her affair with Walker as an excuse to kill them both and walk off with the inheritance. When that plan failed Hayden tried to wipe her and her family out. At this moment one of Hayden's hoodlums pulls a gun in the courtroom and rescues his boss, but in the end Hayden is killed by his brother in a showdown. leave a comment