The Tattered Dress is a 1957 Film Noir Law Procedural written by frequent Douglas Sirk collaborator George Zuckerman and directed by Jack Arnold (The Incredible Shrinking Man).
Glamorous Charleen Reston (Elaine Stewart) comes home with a torn dress and smeared makeup. She tells her husband Michael (Phillip Reed) some version of what happened. In a jealous rage Michael hunts down the man she was with, Larry Bell (Floyd Simmons) and shoots him in the back.
Some time later hotshot New York lawyer James Gordon Blane (Jeff Chandler) travels west by train to serve as Michael Reston’s defense attorney. Traveling with him is journalist Ralph Adams (Edward Platt), who has won a Pulitzer for covering Blane’s antics and is going to Nevada to cover the Reston trial.
The Restons welcome Blane and confer with him at their palatial estate. It’s enough for him to gather that neither one feels too badly about what happened to Larry Bell. He gets another welcome from the town’s sheriff Nick Hoak (Jack Carson). Hoak feels very bad about Larry, who was the son of two of his servants and something of a protégé to him.
Hoak winds up being Blane’s star witness. While Hoak is on the stand Blane uses his testimony to tar the character of the victim and put Hoak’s competence into question. Blane wins the case and celebrates by taking part in a poker game, where he loses $5,000. As he prepares to leave town Blane is arrested by Hoak and prosecutor Frank Mitchell (Paul Birch) for bribing juror Carol Morrow (Gail Russell) to the tune of the same amount he lost at the table.
Blane’s estranged wife Diane (Jeanne Crain) arrives in town to help him fight the charges, as does Billy Giles (George Tobias), a comedian who Blane got acquitted for killing his wife and her lover. Blane will need all the help he can get, since Sheriff Hoak is a very determined foe.
Tropes appearing in this film include:
- Amoral Attorney: Jim Blane is one by his own account. Using his silver tongue to get clients off when he knows they’re guilty is his whole thing, so the Restons aren’t a first.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Blane reminds Diane that they’re still husband and wife, she asks him, “Did you let that stop you with Charleen Reston?” He falls silent, implying that he didn’t.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Blane is an Amoral Attorney who will spring any criminal who has enough money, and Michael Reston paid him well. He’s due for a fall. But Sheriff Hoak is absolutely corrupt and vengeful, looking to punish him through bogus charges, so Blane is the hero by default if nothing else.
- Broken Ace: Blane again. He’s very good at what he does, but hates himself for it and also feels inadequate as a husband and father.
- The City vs. the Country: Blane is unpopular in town because he’s a New York lawyer defending the accused (and actual) murderer of a local.
- The Conscience: Adams tries to act as this toward Blane, and keeps after him to take on a destitute accused man as client back east. He’s ultimately successful at the latter.
- Divorce Is Temporary: James and Diane Blane are separated and seemingly on their way to divorce when he takes on the case. By the end they’ve reunited, and it’s implied he’ll actually be faithful this time.
- Faux Affably Evil: Sheriff Hoak is always friendly to Blane face-to-face, and even does a good job pretending that he considers Blane a friend while testifying on the stand. Privately he’s conspiring to ruin Blane, or failing that, kill him.
- A Fool for a Client: Blane is his own only counsel after firing rival attorney Lester Rawlings (Edward Andrews). The trope is mentioned by name a few times.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Former juror and prosecution witness Carol Morrow is also Sheriff Hoak’s lover. He dumps her in order to maintain his reputation. While he’s taking aim at Blane outside the courtroom after the trial, she shoots Hoak dead.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Michael Reston expresses this sentiment in no uncertain terms.Reston: When I spill a drink on the carpet, my butler cleans up after me.
Blane: When you spill blood your lawyer is expected to do the same.
Reston: Exactly. - Sexy Discretion Shot: Diane goes to Blane's hotel room in the wee hours of the morning before his summation speech. After they hash a few things out she closes the curtains while both are near his bed. End scene.
- Silence Is Golden: The entire sequence between Charleen Reston returning home and Michael Reston killing Larry Bell unfolds without audible dialogue.
- Small-Town Tyrant: While Desert View has a prosecutor and a judge, Sheriff Hoak basically is the law, and runs things according to his own interests.
- Vehicular Assault: Hoak gets word that Bobby Giles is returning from Las Vegas with a lead on the frame-up against Blane. He then personally runs Giles off the road, killing him.
- Video Credits: The opening credits show moving images of a handful of the biggest characters. Used cleverly, because the video credit for Elaine Stewart shows that Charleen Reston wasn’t upset about the incident that tattered her dress.
