[From Luc Moullet’s monograph Cecil B. DeMille: The Emperor of Mauve (2012, Capricci). See Table of Contents]

Joan the Woman (1916)

With mistakes come trials. And C.B.’s work accumulates trial scenes, either reconstructions of trials that actually took place (The King of Kings, Joan the Woman) or invented from scratch (The Cheat, The Whispering Chorus, Manslaughter, Reap the Wild Wind, Unconquered).

The treatment is realistic most of the time—like the depiction of the place where suspects and convicts remain before or after judgment, I mean prison. Screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson had even spent several days in jail to perfect her documentation for Manslaughter.

DeMille has done a lot of work in the casting of jurors, who should, in principle, for contemporary films, belong to different strata of the society. It’s incidentally in the choice of extras that American cinema has always excelled: a bit typical, but not too much either. And in The Whispering Chorus, we also find those little sketches that journalists make during a trial, since cameras were not allowed in the courtroom.

DeMille doesn’t neglect any of the various stages of the trial and tries to push the suspense to its peak: acquittal or conviction, with multiple variants since he films not only contemporary trials but also those from all places and times, beginning with that of Christ.

When it had the means, American cinema never failed to take advantage from this dramatic setting inaugurated by DeMille. It is an extremely good setting because of its official, almost frozen quality, with the basic elements remaining the same from film to film: defence attorneys, prosecutors, judges, jurors, crowds, defendants, all easily identifiable by the viewer. One actor, Gary Cooper, was even a regular of courtroom dramas, almost always as a defendant. Capra, Preminger and Stanley Kramer would become regulars of courtroom dramas.