The Fixer

Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo adapted Bernard Malamud's heavyweight novel, a tale of injustice set in pre-revolutionary Russia, but despite obvious effort all round this remains one of those worthy responsible movies trading on its self-proclaimed prestige. Bates suffers his way to an Oscar nomination as Yakov Bok, the Jew who refuses to confess to a crime (the ritual murder of a child) of which he's innocent and is imprisoned without trial. Bogarde, on the other hand, as the melancholy lawyer, who's murdered for attempting to help Bok, has a touch more charisma. Not a patch on the director's earlier Bird Man of Alcatraz.