Verdict Not Guilty (1933)

Part religious allegory and part church pageant it presents the heavenly trial of a woman who has died giving childbirth out of wedlock The jailer wears a mask deaths head mask and a nuns habit with a skull and crossbones on the front and God sits on an altar flanked by angels while the devil attempts to convict the woman for her sins Shot with a handheld camera that doesnt always remain steady or keep the scene in frame it is full of religious imagery and evocative folkloric elements with flashbacks to the womans life that provide a realism in sharp contrast to the allegorical pageantry It shows its amateur origins the texture the pageantry and the allegorical and ritualistic elements also looks forward to the American Underground cinema of Kenneth Anger Curtis Harrington and others in the 1950s and 1960s