THE DOCK BRIEF/TRIAL AND ERROR
UK, 1962, 76 minutes, Black and white.
Peter sellers, Richard Attenborough, Beryl Reid, Frank petting goal, Frank Thornton.
Directed by James Harris.
The Dock Brief is distinguished because it is based on a play by John Mortimer, celebrated for his creation of Rumpole of the Bailey.
This is the kind of small budget film made in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Britain, short running time, black-and-white photography, a blend of the comic and serious, and featuring a distinguished casts. This time it is very much Peter Sellers playing off Richard Attenborough (and they both had appeared a short time earlier in Only Two Can Play).
Basically, this is conversation between a rather inept barrister, played by Sellers, fairly straightforwardly in comparison with other impersonations. Richard Attenborough plays a harassed husband who has murdered his wife, played with hysterical overtones by Beryl Reid. Most of the film is conversation between the two, the play has been opened out by a series of flashbacks, illustrating the husband’s life, the wedding, his encounters with the wife, a continual laughter and giggle, taking in a lodger, hoping for an affair between them, and his killing his wife.
The court case does not go very well, Sellers not able to defend his client, their creation of a scenario, including a fake witness. With the combination with the husband in the dock, practically pleading for a guilty verdict so that it will all be over. However, the case is dismissed – because of the ineptness of the defence!
While audiences know that Peter Sellers is a genius with a range of characters and accents, this film is an interesting performance by Richard Attenborough who by this stage had shown versatility, from the thug in Brighton Rock, to some of the war films, Dunkirk, and was about to star the next year in The Great Escape. (In the late 60s, Richard Attenborough began to direct, Oh, What a Lovely War, significant films and his Oscar-wind for Gandhi). Attenborough continued his acting career for decades, in the 90s appearing in Jurassic Park and Elizabeth.
