Random thoughts on "A Succession..."
Not all episodes are who-dunnits but this one happens to be and is a pretty good one.
Stirling Silliphant was author of many scripts for "Naked City" and also served as story editor. Before I knew for sure that he wrote this script, I knew he wrote it because it has the characteristic traits of a Silliphant script. The philosophical meditation in the opening and closing narration along with the title is typical of his writing. So is the moral ambiguity whereby, in this case, an otherwise good person does a bad thing. Characteristically, a Silliphant story isn't immoral; rather it's just that Silliphant likes to play with the fact that, in real life, things are not always black and white, and when we get the answers to the questions that trouble us they are not always satisfying.
When Flint hands Miss Walden the gun, she holds it in the worst possible way, proving his intuition that she had never fired a pistol before and could not have been the killer who had been established as being a good shot. The thumb of her left and possibly both of her thumbs could have been injured if she had fired the gun. You can see why if you pay careful attention to the gun during the ballistic test scene.
Not all episodes are who-dunnits but this one happens to be and is a pretty good one.
Stirling Silliphant was author of many scripts for "Naked City" and also served as story editor. Before I knew for sure that he wrote this script, I knew he wrote it because it has the characteristic traits of a Silliphant script. The philosophical meditation in the opening and closing narration along with the title is typical of his writing. So is the moral ambiguity whereby, in this case, an otherwise good person does a bad thing. Characteristically, a Silliphant story isn't immoral; rather it's just that Silliphant likes to play with the fact that, in real life, things are not always black and white, and when we get the answers to the questions that trouble us they are not always satisfying.
When Flint hands Miss Walden the gun, she holds it in the worst possible way, proving his intuition that she had never fired a pistol before and could not have been the killer who had been established as being a good shot. The thumb of her left and possibly both of her thumbs could have been injured if she had fired the gun. You can see why if you pay careful attention to the gun during the ballistic test scene.
