... "occasional patches of grain" as though it were a fault.

Grover Crisp delivers again.

Dukie by author Robert Traver

Anatomy of a Murder is a fascinating film. It is not one which I could say that I particularly like, though that does not mean that I think it is a failure. Quite the contrary - it beautifully succeeds in its portrayal of the workings of a law case. Yet it exposes a rather hollow, transactional view of society throughout. It does not suggest, rather problematic in their own way, notions of crusading and idealistic lawyers or saintly clients, instead follows a pragmatic point of view to such an extent that any sense of morality feels less than useless and quick to be abandoned, if not non-existent.

Nothing particularly matters about the case (except the lawyer's fee, although even that proves elusive by the end!) - perceived guilt or innocence does not matter, which may initially seem admirable in the sense of an attorney putting aside personal feelings to do their job of defending a client. Yet is that what is happening here? No, that is too idealistic a view. Instead this is about an attorney defending an important client for financial, even self-publicity reasons. Does it matter that the soldier killed a man in cold blooded murder? Not particularly - just as long as he can give the right reasons for his action. Does it matter that the wife who was attacked frequents bars dressed provocatively? Not particularly - just as long as she buttons up during the trial so she doesn't give the game away. Does the testimony from the other prisoner that the defendant was crowing about duping his attorney and beating his wife (presumably for her infidelities) once the trial was over mean anything? Not particularly - that's a whole different matter and neither issue is one worth dealing with. Pragmatism takes primacy.

The case matters above all, yet because it has no principles behind it, just a lot of point scoring (even a distracting dog brought in to charm the audience), it ceases to have any particular impact. The courtroom becomes a space for a theatrical performance rather than the understanding of the 'truth' of a matter, with the best (or most likable) team of performers winning. Appearance, even if it is just a facade, matters even more than hard evidence (as in the youthful appearance of the Army doctor being met with disappointment).

Yet success or failure also appears to mean nothing. Even as the points are being scored, nothing is being remembered. Every moment is critical as it occurs, yet totally irrelevant once it has passed. Short term pragmatism means everything is constantly being reset and nothing is being built upon. The slate is being wiped clean which on the one hand allows for a new start, but on the other prevents anyone from having any relevant past history, or to fight to have it remembered. Even the verdict means nothing, has solved nobody's problems and almost in a blinkered way refused to shed any difficult light onto any of the relationships or motivations of those involved, just allowed things to move on somewhere else (In a sense all these issues are present in many of Preminger's other films, such as Exodus, The Cardinal or Advise and Consent)

In other words it is probably the most clear eyed view of the law profession I have seen, which makes it one of the more condemnatory of them (as perhaps personified in James Stewart's anti-heroic performance, manipulating the facts around to suit his case as much as Scottie did to recreate his perfectly imperfect woman in Vertigo. The only difference is that he now has a partner in the prosecution doing the same thing from their perspective!). I'm not too sure how much the filmmakers are understanding the Pandora's box they open with this film - with the idea of whether justice is done or not or the pursuit of truth, however imperfect, getting lost in the incurious amorality of the law, we are just left with an incuriosity that allows logic to be overwhelmed by theatrics and suggests that guilt or innocence are relative and all that matters is how good the performance of your lawyer is. (I love the scene when the attorneys are waiting for the verdict to come in - suddenly, after all of the grandstanding, know what it is like not to have control over the direction of the result, and seem to feel slightly aggrieved at both the wait but also the sense that they have no further input to make, and perhaps even a slight nagging possibility that the jury themselves might not have felt the need to have listened to anything they were saying and might even have had the temerity to come to their own conclusions!)

Perhaps the one person who isn't portrayed in a slightly cynical (or realist!) light is the presiding Judge, who gets to be one of the warmer human beings, with all the best jokes and yet also a clear sense of being able to draw a line, whether in sustaining or overruling objections, or in admonishing the court to take discussion of Mrs Manion's panties seriously. Does this mean to suggest that Judges are better people generally than attorneys? Or are they able to be better for having been slightly removed from the bear-pit of dealing with defending and prosecuting clients? Or are we meant to think it is just this particular Judge who is a rather kind, difficult to fluster person who is able to sensitively guide the case to its conclusion? The one thing that prevents this view of the law being totally horrific in implication is the presence of the Judge, but what happens if you get a Judge who is just as biased, blustering and, dare I say it, pragmatic as the attorneys? What hope for anyone then?

Great writeup, really fantastic. I suppose it's important to note that Preminger grew up under a lawyer and even went to law school back in Europe which might be why he takes such an open approach. It really makes the casting of Stewart all the more vicious like a Vertigo light.
By the same token though doesn't it suggest also that there are people out there not beaten by the system who can take control and do good which is more than can be said of Preminger's other dablings with the law in Hurry Sundown and especially Advise and Consent where nobody keeps their ethics if it benefits somebody.

The 'cold-blooded' aspect is certainly up for debate- there is question about whether or not the murder was premeditated, but I don't think there's any question that Gazzara's character is a hot blooded man who acted on the spur of the moment. Are you suggesting this should matter? Here and in your previous point, it's key that as pragmatic as Stewart is, the movie carefully contrasts him to the evidently far nastier Dancer- he spends quite a lot of time trying to build a 'she was asking for it' case about the possible rape, and I have very little doubt that he would happily push a prisoner to give false testimony.

It may be a trite comparison, but there's a Rashomon quality to the case- the elements that don't fit together and the sense that there is more than one true story of the events as they occurred, even with everyone struggling to tell the truth to the best of their ability, reflect how difficult is the job of even the most honest and scrupulous court. While it's obviously somewhat uncomfortable to have an obvious pretext like 'uncontrollable urge' carry the day in court, the overall sense is that Dancer's court strategy is terribly nasty (much of it revolving around a 'she was asking for it' implication towards Mrs. Manion's rape) and if anything, the lingering sense I got from the movie is that such attacks were not rewarded. Neither side is entirely honest, and certainly the quality of the attorneys' theatrics mattered as much or more than the substance of the case, but I do think the better case won- and as such, the movie is unwilling entirely to discount the merits inherent to one's plea. I think Preminger's viewpoint was that the system was obviously imperfect, but it was also the best one available, and I think the movie reflects that view- though I'm not sure even such a guarded statement of it isn't overly optimistic in real world terms.

Yes, definitely it suggests that a decent person is still around, though I find that adds to the sense of arbitrariness - it is just the luck of the draw that you get a rare, principled person. Which is kind of more worrying in highlighting the contrast than there being a feeling that the Judge is just one of many. Instead I get the feeling that the James Stewart and George C. Scott characters are more abundant!

Although with such emphasis placed on the opacity of the characters in the film (in order to 'place us in the role of the juror', which I don't hesitate to say is a fascinating concept, and I think it is interesting to see that applied just as much to every character in the film as to those on trial or on the witness stand) that makes it rather difficult to know whether the Judge is being portrayed as the nicest character in the film in service of a point about the decency of judges in general, or whether it could just be because the filmmakers (as suggested in the extra features) were in awe of Joseph Welch's real life comments at the McCarthy hearings ("Have you no sense of decency?") and that affected the rather idealised portrayal of the Judge that he was portraying in the film. Is a wider point being made, or a specific one, or was a conscious point intended to be made at all? One of the best aspects, and also the most troubling one, is that this isn't made clear.


It obviously matters enough to Stewart's lawer Biegler to admonish Remick's Mrs Manion for immediately hanging around bars, along with not visiting her husband in jail for days, since that is giving out the wrong message which could hand ammunition to the prosecution if they caught wind of it. It is the practicality of giving that advice which is kind of frightening - the idea that someone recognises the problems with that behaviour but only from the point of view of how that will affect their case. It could be seen positively as Biegler not getting involved in other people's business, yet it also exposes the performance aspect of the trial, almost as if Biegler is already formulating that scene where he gets Mrs Manion to stand up, take off her hat and do a twirl so that he can show off her beauty at the exact time of his choice. It feels as if it exposes that understanding the motivations, or thought processes, of the actual people in the case are not really important, instead it is about manipulating them into certain jury-pleasing stances. Which all leads into the actual result refreshingly not being a turning point for anyone, or a grand climax, instead just as arbitrary as anything else - the moment when one side or the other finds out whether their tactics have worked.


This I think is a turning point in the trial - the whole basis of Biegler's defence of Mr Manion is that he was acting with 'irresistible urge' i.e. temporary insanity because with an hour having elapsed between Mrs Manion coming back from being assaulted and Mr Manion going to kill Barney Quill, the whole defence of having acting in a hot headed manner and shooting Quill is not tenable. So anything that suggests that Manion is being driven temporarily insane (such as bringing in a convict to report on what he has overheard), can ironically only serve to strengthen his case and ironically work against Dancer having called that witness (which is presumably why he describes it as being a 'last resort' witness, since all the convict serves to bring to the case is the idea that Manion has duped Biegler and that when he gets off he will beat his wife for her intransigence, both elements which, while being juicy details, bear no relevance on the case at hand - although they help to fill in a few gaps (or do they?) for the audience).

It is a misstep that is equivalent to Dancer mistaking Miss Pilant's relationship with Quill as a sexual, sugar daddy-style one (when it is a real daddy one!). Otherwise until these moments Dancer and Biegler seem totally equivalent, with each anticipating each other's moves (suggesting this is a highly codified game, again without too much focus on the individual characters involved in specific cases) and not being surprised when they use them due to their preparation. I particularly like Scott's performance in the scene where Stewart brings up the precedent case of 'irresistible urge' that justifies his defence - while Dancer's companion is at first annoyed by the inane chatter about fly fishing between the Judge and Biegler and then surprised by this turn of events, Dancer is instead quiet, suggesting that he knows where this is going and was already familiar with that precedent case, and while hoping that Biegler would not have picked up on it, they now just proceed on from Biegler having scored that point. Though likely the prosecution would have been happy if the other party had not been so on the ball with regard to old law cases!


I think you have a point (I particularly like that scene where Dancer is questioning Mrs Manion and slowly moves ever closer to her during the questioning. In one of the interviews on the disc this is suggested to be like a seduction of Mrs Manion but to me, especially in the way that the shot feels very much from her point of view, there felts like more of a sense of overwhelming intimidation to that scene. Of pushing her to the edge), yet the thing that makes me see Biegler and Dancer as equivalent is Biegler's treatment of Miss Pilant - that in order to get his client off he is not above getting the daughter of a murdered man on the stand to get her to give damning testimony that her father could have been a rapist. (I think it is not for nothing that her name is an anagram of 'Pliant'!)

(EDIT: Compare this to the treatment of the mother in John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln being pressurised by the prosecution to say which of her two sons she saw holding the knife used in a murder until Lincoln steps in and puts a stop to the questioning, asking the Judge to not force a mother into choosing which of her sons will live and which will die)


The most disturbing thing about the film for me is that it really doesn't seem to matter whether or not the wife was raped or was willing (or whether she does or does not wear panties on her visits to a bar). Or whether the husband shot Quill for honour reasons to defend a violated wife, or out of anger at a wife's infidelity, or even just out of an 'irresistible impulse'. Or whether Quill was an actual rapist or was led on. Or whether Miss Pilant is left wondering if her father was a rapist who got what he deserved, or an adulterer who was murdered. These aren't questions that the law is concerned with - they are too complex to be dealt with in a courtroom definitively. So they get reduced to an abstract, performance based level to allow the law to deal with it (usually based on previous precedent rather than on a case-by-case basis).

I agree that the film is like Rashomon, but I think Anatomy of a Murder is both better than, and far more disturbing in its implications than the Kurosawa film (The Kurosawa film, for one thing, never loses sight of those people actually involved in the case, even if they all have different perspectives on the events. Although Rashmon does bring up the idea that the best actor has to be the one telling the truth, only to continually dash that notion. Anatomy of a Murder instead treats those directly involved in the murder case as pawns in the machinations of a larger organisation, even if the Manion's also seem to be playing another private game of their own)

I agree heartily with all of that though it makes me respect and love the film all the more as one of the best concerning modern legal proceedings (though I think the best is Advise and Consent). I'm not sure what to add without repeating you, but the best thing it does get right from my own experience sitting as both a jury member and objective seater (my grandfather was a lawyer and I would once in a while sit with his as one of his defense friends had a case) is that despite being the best of the known alternatives the jargon, politicking, and emphasis on history does abstract the facts of the case and even the people involved to a molecular degree. The question of course becomes whether this is a good thing. In general the people and facts of the case of split apart and examined until it becomes impossible to be emotionally invested and you are just left with the mechanical parts of the case.

That's fascinating and makes me think even more that the film should more accurately have been called "Anatomy of a Murder Trial", rather than just of a particular murder!

Good call though I took the title to refer to how trials break down crimes like a coroner would a body. It shows the anatomy of the crime, the murder, though in doing so the film also reveals the anatomy of the trial too.

I'm not actually sure I disagree with you on any major points, colin, I think we just have a somewhat different view of the justice system portrayed in the film- I think for me, it reflects the way truth operates in the real world as well as anything does, and I've long since come to terms with how depressingly vague real-world notions of 'truth' are. Certainly, I agree with knives that the amorphous sense of reality that comes out of the movie is very much one of its strengths, however cynical the portrait may be.

There's no question that the movie portrays the legal system as being almost a form of dance (perhaps another self-conscious name there), in which those who are competent know all the steps by heart- I never feel that Dancer is surprised by anything, though he is frequently unsuccessful in his gambits. I don't think it makes that dance seem so arcane as to be totally unconnected to real-world events- it's not Strangelove, where the way a war is negotiated and the results it has are so absurdly disconnected that an accurate display is inherently parodic- but it does very much feel like a sport, where there's a distinct arbitrariness to the whole affair and however hard people may pull for their side, it generally doesn't really matter that much to them in the long run.

First-Time Poster...

Saw this on the Warner Archive:

http://www.wbshop.com/product/anatomy+o ... nd&from=fn

Details

Running Time: 160 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 16 X 9 FULL FRAME|ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO - 1.85:1
Format: Made To Order DVD
Audio Format: DOLBY DIGITAL SURROUND 5.1
Box Type: Amaray Case
Copyright Info: © 1959, renewed 1987 Otto Preminger Films, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.