The director’s amphitheatre-like arrangement of the courtroom causes the audience to worry about the outcome of the trial, as many people ended up dead in the old Grecian tragedies.
The director has probably instructed the actors on how to act this particular part of the scene and Derek Bentley’s family are seated just one row above him, his mother and sister look almost as nervous and panic-stricken as Bentley himself, whereas his father merely looks angry with him. The expressions of the family cause the audience to feel pity for them as they did nothing to deserve the trial and earlier in the film they did warn Bentley about hanging around Craig and spending too much time with him.
The next people in the pan’s circle of the courtroom are Bentley and Craig; Chris Craig’s is sitting quite calmly, looking unafraid as if he thinks that he is not going to be punished too harshly. In contrast to Craig, Derek is a nervous wreck, he is shaking and almost in tears. Here again the director has influenced the actor’s portrayal of their character in this particular situation in order that the audience feels that it should be Craig and not Bentley who is punished for the crime.
The audience sees Bentley sitting behind the rails looking quite innocent and child-like, as opposed to Craig who is looking nonchalantly bored. The audience fells that Bentley looks more innocent, this makes the audience feel more protective towards Bentley than towards Craig.
After Craig and Bentley the camera swings round onto the jury, they are all elderly men and are wearing mainly black, they are portrayed as stern and have their arms folded in an aggressive position. The appearance of the jury makes the audience feel that they have already made up their mind about the outcome of the case and that the actual trial is a mere formality which must be endured.
The director has cast the jury well so that they all look stern and almost cruel. They are sat in their aggressive positions, which is probably the director’s idea. They are also dressed in black and seem to almost resemble undertakers, which has the effect of unnerving the audience.
The pan then rises up over the priest (who is the representative of the church in the courtroom) to the Judge, who is seated looking official and authoritative in his brightly coloured robes. The director has ended the pan uplifted on the Judge because he is the most important person in the room, and the arrangement of the shot tells the audience this.
Throughout the trial the director portrays Bentley as child-like and immature in a successful attempt to win the pity of the audience. During the questioning of Constable Fairfax Bentley is seated in the background watching, then as the questions progress he begins to follow the speakers as you would follow a tennis match. His eyes are darting between the two men and have a distinctly hunted look, like a child who is about to be scolded for something he has done wrong. The audience, because of the actor’s portrayal of Bentley’s character as a weak and defenceless child, feels pity for Bentley. Derek Bentley is again portrayed as a child-like figure when the prosecution (Christmas Humphreys) is in the stands questioning him. At first he is only being questioned by Humphreys (who is seated directly in front of him.) Humphreys is questioning Bentley about the knuckle-duster and why he took it from Craig, Bentley replies:
“Something I’d never had Sir, a gift”
This line shows just how much of a child Bentley is, as most children accept any gift given to them on the principle that it is a gift and therefore must be accepted. This was the idea that Bentley was working on when he accepted the knuckle-duster from Craig.
After a few minutes of questioning from Humphreys the Judge (seated on Bentley’s left) joins in with his own questions, it now seems as if the two men are attacking Bentley, trying to force him to confess.
As Bentley becomes more and more terrified the director shows the audience things from Bentley’s point of view: the camera flicks back and forth from Humphreys to the Judge as they alternately fire questions at Bentley. The camera then zooms in on Bentley who, at the director’s choice, still has bruises left over from Fairfax’s rough treatment of him, two months earlier. These bruises heighten the audience’s feelings of pity towards Bentley and also make him appear more vulnerable. As the camera continues to zoom in on Bentley the audience can hear his increasingly laboured breathing and see his eyes flickering around the room.
The director has done this in order to show the audience how weak and vulnerable Bentley really is, the fact that he is crying also shows the audience how child-like he is.
The director later makes a contrast to Bentley with Craig. This also shows the audience again how vulnerable Bentley is, as when Craig is in the stands he answers all the questions glibly, until the prosecution brings up some comments that Craig allegedly made while in prison. Craig obviously did not make these comments as he raises his voice and, for the first time, he looks afraid. The fact that he does look frightened gives the audience an insight into his character that they did not have before, that for all his gangster attitude Craig is still worried about the trial and it shows the audience that Craig does actually have feelings. The director has probably inserted this in order that the audience does feel something towards Craig instead of just pity for Bentley and dislike towards Craig who originally got Bentley into this mess.
The director also uses sound to influence his audience; for example, at the very end of the court scene the Judge speaks about the weapons the two boys were carrying. After his speech the courtroom falls silent and after a minute there is a massive eruption of sound as everyone stands up, apart from Craig and Bentley. Everyone else in the courtroom is twice the height of Craig and Bentley and is looking down upon them, both Craig and Bentley look very intimidated at this point, when the two boys stand up a moment later Bentley is shaking and looks very unsteady. The audience feels real pity for Bentley at this point because of how weak he looks.
After all the noise of everyone standing up the director has inserted a silence. During this silence the audience feels anxious because the atmosphere the director has created within the courtroom is very tense and the audience is able to pick up on this through the expressions of the people seated in the courtroom and also through the silence.
During the period of silence Bentley turns to look up at his sister, as if for reassurance, she smiles although she is nearly in tears. The director has managed the acting of this part of the scene very well, all the family look close to tears, this also makes the audience feel sorry for them not just Derek. The family probably knows Derek’s side of the story by this time (two months after the scene on the roof.) And realises that he did not commit the crime. They also know Bentley and know that he only has a mental age of eleven, a point that was, for reasons unknown, not raised during the trial.
The jury finds both Bentley and Craig guilty, but with a recommendation for mercy for Bentley. The director then has the camera zoom in on the judge as he sentences the two boys. The director has instructed the actor playing the Judge to place a black cloth over his wig before sentencing Bentley, after this there is another silence where the audience is again, able to tap into the tension in the courtroom. The black cloth is cleverly organised by the director to give the audience a strong feeling of apprehension for Bentley, as they have an idea of what may happen, but are still unsure.
As Bentley is sentenced to death the camera zooms in on his family, where his mother and sister have collapsed in tears. The courtroom is filled with noise as Bentley staggers, as if intoxicated down into the cells. The cells are situated downstairs from the courtroom, this is maybe because as Bentley descends down them, he is also descending into guilt, although he is not guilty, because he has been sentenced to death the jury (who represent the opinions of the country) has shown that it believes Bentley is guilty.
The director has skilfully manipulated the mediums at his disposal in order to change what the audience feels towards Craig and Bentley and the other people in the courtroom; both directly and indirectly involved with the trial.
The director has also picked up on what he imagines that the audience should be feeling about certain people and parts of the trial. He has used filming techniques, sound types and volumes, costumes, actors and acting techniques and also the arrangement of the entire set to try and make the audience feel the emotions that he had planned for them throughout the scene. Whether the audience had a positive or a negative reaction to certain sections of the scene was entirely down to the directors skilled directing of the scene and to how he wished his audience to react.
Throughout the scene the director has recognised how the audience should react and has helped them to feel pity, anger and fear at different times during the scene. He has done this by manipulating the scene until he has changed it sufficiently to cause the audience to have emotions towards the courtroom scene and the people involved in it.