Review of Anatomy of a Murder (1959) by John Y — 06 Feb 2008

Terrific courtroom drama classic, directed by Otto Preminger (the director of Laura). Even though we've seen this story countless times since - weekly on TV shows like Law and Order - this classic still is a good viewing, largely thanks to the extremely charismatic performance by the ever-likeable Jimmy Stewart.

For its time, the film must have been pretty cutting edge - murder is clean enough, but rape is brought up and one character even uses the word 'Bitch'. The film does suffer from being overly long at 160 minutes - perhaps this adds realism to the proceedings as cases do take a long time, but it seemed unnecessary.

Also, at times Stewart's personality is so strong that in real life he would definitely have been held in contempt of court. This makes the film not as complete a success as it could have been, but it is still a classic worthy of such status.