The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1940)

Directed by

David Burton

Genre

drama film, mystery film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 14m

Rating

5.3 of 10 from 3 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A man is on trial for murder but refuses to speak in his own defense. A lawyer tries to uncover the man's secret past to save him from execution.

subduedmysteriousmelodramatictheatricaldatedplot-drivensentimental

What happens

The Man Who Wouldn't Talk is a 1940 mystery film directed by David Burton and starring Lloyd Nolan, Jean Rogers, and Richard Clarke. It is a remake of the 1929 film The Valiant which had starred Paul Muni, and was based on a play of the same name. It was Nolan's first film for Twentieth Century Fox, where he went on to be a successful star of B Movie mysteries such as the Michael Shayne series. Nolan's portrayal of the lead character was deliberately more subdued than Muni's had been, and the film was "opened up" with the addition of flashback scenes and other devices to make it less dialogue-based than the original. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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