Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003014334
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The actor paid visits to nearly every live drama series there was - "Alcoa Theater," "Goodyear TV Playhouse," "Philco TV Playhouse" and many more. Sponsors' names were sometimes part of the title then and, as it happens, another sponsor's is part of the title for Matthau's return to TV. "The Incident" is another offering of "AT&T Presents."
It's filmed drama, though, not live. TV once offered a dozen live dramas a week, now you're lucky to get three or four in a decade.
"Incident" airs tonight on CBS (WDBJ, Channel 7 in the Roanoke viewing area). Set in the summer of 1944, it's an intriguing whodunit about a small-town lawyer in wartime America grappling with truth and conscience. The lawyer, played by Matthau, is ordered by a federal district judge to defend a German prisoner of war charged with the murder of a local doctor.
It appears to be the ultimate open-and-shut case. The doctor had visited the POW camp outside of town earlier in the day and had been shoved by the soldier charged with the murder. He died with the soldier's Iron Cross in his hand.
The judge wants a trial that goes through the motions and looks fair, but he and everybody else assume the outcome will be the suspect's hanging.
There are curious developments, however, including the fact that the old doc (Barnard Hughes) came to the lawyer's home drunk the night of the murder, muttering about "all those poor boys, none of them ever going home." And what gives at that camp? Captured Germans are patrolling it at night with baseball bats while American M.P.'s stand outside the gates.
Of course, the whole town wants the German soldier found guilty, and at first, the lawyer does, too. His animosity is heightened by the fact that his only son, Harry, is a G.I. stationed in Europe.
As there is more to the murder case than meets the eye, there's more to this trim and intelligent movie as well. The presence of Matthau bestows a certain importance, and yet his performance is as unpretentious and natural as a sandlot baseball game.
Something about Matthau and Harmon Cobb, the character he plays, radiates integrity. So old Cobb doesn't have to make any grandiose pronouncements about fair trials or the American way or duty or honor or any of that. He doesn't have to say it because he seems to be it.
Susan Blakely, on whom the '40s clothes look great, plays the daughter-in-law. Her best scenes are those in which she reads aloud from letters her husband has sent from France. When she gets to the intimate parts addressed just to her, she stops suddenly, shyly folds the letter and puts it away to read later.
Harry Morgan plays the imperious federal judge, Robert Carradine is the Harvard-educated prosecutor and Peter Firth is the furtive, accused German. The script, by Michael and James Novell, may seem gimmicked, but the cast brings enough conviction to make it ring true.
Director Joseph Sargent, who did the superb "Day One" for "AT&T Presents" last season, brings out affecting nuances - life as it might have been in a small town during the war. The town, Lincoln Bluff, Colo., is fictitious, but the film was shot in the very real and very beautiful Colorado Springs.
A lesser director might have tried to pump the story up with histrionics and panicky tricks. Some of Cobb's old pals in town turn on him when he agrees to defend the German. Swastikas are painted by unseen vandals on the Cobbs' front porch.
Matthau, looking older and even more rumpled than people may remember him from the movies, couldn't be better. He doesn't overdo anything - not even his trademark underdoing.
Spending two hours in his company is a treat and a privilege, and it helps make "The Incident" seem anything but incidental.
\ Washington Post Writers Group Tom Shales is TV Editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post
by CNB