The feud wants him dead, and only the guest-rule keeps the other family from it.
The review
A young man comes home into a feud. Keaton, 1923, and not a wagon-train hit. He falls for the other family's daughter and cannot be killed while he is their guest. The kids can watch. I liked it more than I expected that late, because the joke is a rule that actually binds.
Hospitality is a real rule and a trap. The waterfall is the finish. A family code stops a killing and also pins him in the house. Children who think manners are only please and thank you can use that talk. The feud is a rotten way to run two houses. The rule still holds.
Adults. The courtroom is the work. What happened and what can be proved are not the same fact.
The review
A soldier shoots a bar owner and says the man raped his wife. A former prosecutor who now fishes more than he practices takes the defense. I am not going to describe the testimony. In 1959 the testimony itself was the scandal, because a courtroom in an American film was asked to say out loud what a trial of this kind has to say. The lawyer is good at the saying. He is also having a good time, and the film lets you see the good time, which is the correction inside the craft.
Adults. A house does not need this as a primer. A house that wants one picture of how a verdict is made, rather than how a villain confesses, can use it. Ask, at the end, what the jury was allowed to know and what the rooms already knew. Those are different piles. The decade's more famous courtroom hours snap the case shut with a witness who breaks. This one is more honest about the gap, and less honest about whether the lawyer is a man to admire. Admire the proceeding. Decline the grin.
