Review of Anatomy of a Murder (1959) by Paul Z — 21 Oct 2008

I was going to start this analysis of this penultimate courtroom picture by saying that Anatomy of a Murder is not just a courtroom drama, a murder thriller, or even a character study, and that it encompasses all of the aspects of life from which those things come in drama, and maybe I would have been right. But even if I am, I could construct an examination more simply by just saying that it is a courtroom drama that goes beyond what most courtroom dramas envision as the call of duty. Its long-drawn-out sequences of extreme tension seem to inconspicuously grow from expository scenes that lounge casually like a Cassavetes film, like the first fifteen minutes with Jimmy Stewart and Arthur O'Connell.

What I like about Otto Preminger is that he is relentless, and in 1957, that was surely clear as day to anyone walking into the local movie house. There is a glaring reality to his work, even The Man With the Golden Arm, which seems to unravel from the perspective of Sinatra's intoxicated character in a sort of surreal way but still feels like the most honest depiction of life itself. Perhaps Anatomy of a Murder is the same sort of aesthetic, a world depicted from the perspective of its protagonist, Jimmy Stewart, who unlike Sinatra's Frankie Machine is a clear-headed, seasoned and taurine realist.

Lee Remick plays the flirtatious wife of a very young Ben Gazzara, who is charged with murder for shooting a barkeeper who allegedly raped her. Her character's purpose is to cause internal conflict within Jimmy Stewart's defense attorney by endangering their case with her exhibition and flirtation, all rooted from how stunningly drop-dead sexy she is. But the movie has nothing to do with that. That's all Lee Remick. I had a hard time getting up when the movie was over because my loins were parched and blistered with heat, or maybe that was my hand working on its own. Everything in the movie is as real as if it were happening in your living room.

The great Duke Ellington not only wrote the jazz score, but appears for a moment playing the piano in a club with Stewart and ostensibly playing himself! And he is given one awesomely infectious period line: "You're not splittin' the scene, man?" And there's a superb performance as the presiding judge, shrewd and cunning in a rather humorous way, by Joseph N. Welch, the Boston attorney who shattered Joseph McCarthy on TV in 1954.

Complementing the drama in the intriguing and truly perplexing ambiguity of the defendant and his wife, there is the geniality and earthy wisdom of Stewart and O'Connell. O'Connell is a clever but boozing Irishman of great presence, and he and Stewart both have had it up to here with people's crap, and they do not see much reason to repress that sensation. George C. Scott, as the prosecution attorney, has the suave menace that really reminds you that he is quite a terrific actor.