Based on a story by Jean-José Frappa, Accused, Stand Up! was the second film that Tourneur made in France after his return from United States and his German side trip for the making of Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen (The Ship of Lost Men, 1929). Gaby, stage and real life companion to a knife thrower, is accused of killing Yvette Delys, the star-owner of the Paris music hall show where they work. Every clue leads to her, and the trial seems to take a turn for the worse when the defense attorney, in a theatrical gesture, unveils the assassin. The plot (reminiscent of Veiller’s The Trial of Mary Dugan with Norma Shearer) is not as interesting as the masterly mix of registers and genres that Tourneur skill- fully employs: marital comedy, courtroom drama, show within a show, the detective film and the humorous angle (perhaps the most dated register) captured in the long- winded digressions of an old actor in decline. The film offers an unfiltered picture of the cruelty of the show business world where Yvette Delys (Suzanne Delvé), an aging star, abuses her contractual power over the knife thrower to whom she is sexually attracted. As usual Tourneur knows how to choose the most compelling details of settings, starting with the halls of the theater, where the false killer, Charles Vanel, wanders around. The films boasts two unforgettable scenes: the discovery of Yvette’s body, with the unsettling image of the woman’s legs on the ground peeking out from the semi-darkness, and the closing argument of the defense attorney, an uninterrupted monologue in which the lawyer looks straight into the camera and at the viewer and acts out the crime inducing the assassin as if in a trance to repeat the murderous gesture.

Roberto Chiesi