Posted as part of The Hollywood Revue’s Fashion in Film Blogathon running March 29-30.
Witness for the Prosecution is not the most fashionable movie ever made. It does not make my heart leap and yearn like Humoresque or cringe and guffaw like High School Hellcats.
It simply has costumes that really fit the characters (not to mention the characters the characters are trying to make everyone believe they are).
So let’s take a look-see.
First we’ve got our intrepid hero, Charles Laughton, and his gal Friday (who is really his nurse because he has a heart condition and he does not want anything to do with her for most of the movie), Elsa Lanchester.
This little car ride shows us their typical wardrobe (as well as their typical attitude). I did a little research (the rigorous and academic typing of “1950s British nurses” into Google Images), and even by 1950s standards, Lanchester’s outfit here is bulky and old-fashioned.
And she’s a bulky, old-fashioned nurse who delights in her bulky, old-fashioned ways.