Roxie Hart

In twenties Chicago, the dancer Roxie Hart decides the fastest route into the newspapers is to be accused of murder, and takes the blame for one she did not commit. The courtroom becomes a stage, her lawyer a director, the jury an audience. The film is not interested in justice. It is interested in spectacle: it argues that the press, the law and fame are all doing the same job. On trial, Roxie poses continuously and her only worry is that the photographs come out well. The form is fast comedy: overlapping lines, crowded courtroom scenes, and Ginger Rogers giving testimony by dancing. The source is Maurine Dallas Watkins's 1926 Broadway play Chicago, which she wrote out of the real Chicago murder trials of 1924. The same source later became the musical Chicago. The biggest change here comes from censorship: because the Production Code did not allow crime to pay, this Roxie is genuinely innocent and confesses only for the publicity. William A. Wellman directed. Adolphe Menjou plays the lawyer. Who it is for: viewers who like the fast comedies of the forties and are curious about where Chicago came from. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the musical. There are no songs here, and none of these characters is ever really held to account.