Name: High Wall
Genre: Drama, Romance, Crime
Released: 1947-12-17
Duration: 1 h 39 min

High Wall (1947)

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt

AllMovie Rating
6
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Synopsis by Hal Erickson

Former army pilot Robert Taylor is accused, on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence, of his wife's murder. Suffering from periodic blackouts, Taylor isn't so certain of his innocence himself. When offered a brain operation, Taylor refuses, knowing that if he is proven sane he will be executed for murder. Instead, he opts for confinement in a high-walled veteran's mental institution. A compassionate lady doctor (Audrey Totter) falls in love with Taylor, convincing him to have the operation. Even after emerging from the ether, Taylor cannot remember any of the details concerning his wife's death--but he does recall that the dead woman had recently taken a job with a publisher (Herbert Marshall) of religious books. While the killer's identity is tipped off by this revelation, the audience is never certain that Robert Taylor isn't a murderer--especially since he'd previously appeared as a homicidal maniac in the 1946 film Undercurrent. The best moment in High Wall is the casual disposal of the sole witness to the murder, via a long, dark elevator shaft.

Characteristics

Themes

Amnesia | Miscarriage of Justice

Keywords

accident, Air-Force, apartment, arrest, asylum [mental hospital], barnstorming, blackout [power loss], brain, brain-damage, car, claim, con/scam, confession [criminal], consciousness, cure, death, doctor/nurse, drugs, escape, extramarital-affair, false-accusation, fear, freedom, guilt, homecoming, house, injury, innocence, killing, knock-out, life, maniac, mental-institution, murder, name-clearing, offer, operation, police, problems, psychiatry, psychotherapy, publisher, responsibility, return, sanity, scheme, service, spouse, struggle, surgery, suspect, unconscious, visit, wall, war, wife