Counsellor at Law Reviews

A monument to acting and direction at peak form. John Barrymore gives one of his finest performances as a Jewish lawyer who works his way to the top of his profession only to have his gentile wife, Doris Kenyon, leave him. Barrymore was the second choice to play the role after Paul Muni, who had played the role on stage but feared being typecast. The film is superbly directed by William Wyler, who discarded a musical score, having music only at the opening and closing credits, so that the dramatic weight fell upon the crisp dialogue and Barrymore's spellbinding delivery. The film was made at breakneck speed, with lines delivered in the rapid-fire manner that was then popular in the new talkies. Wyler offered a new brand of filmic realism where he kept his cameras inside the lawyer's offices almost through the first reel, jump-cutting from one office to another but focusing on Barrymore and his nerve-center desk, providing urgency and high drama at an electrifying pace. Today the lightning still crackles through this masterful film.