"There are 4 ways that I can defend a murder:
Nr. 1: It wasn't murder. It was suicide or accidental.
Nr. 2: You didn't do it.
Nr. 3: You legally justified like self defence.
Nr. 4: The killing was excusable."
Let me start with a short story. Last summer I was lucky to spend some days in Vienna. One hot night I went to a garden cinema to watch Otto Preminger's Laura (1944). Actually that's a special one according to its mysterious storytelling. I'm not talking about its story, it's about its narrative, the way how it tells a "murder" case. In 1944 that film was quite exceptional according its unmarked changes between objective and subjective sequences in its diegetic world. This typical narrative feature of art films were rediscovered again only the late ninetees in Hollywood.
But how this story connects to the other movie of Preminger, the Anatomy of a Murder from 1959? First of all this film's storytelling doesn't trick the viewer: its narrative is linear, causal, perfectly sober. Just like a juridical argument in a court, as the film actually is. Preminger's film mirrors its story in its storytelling. Just perfect. The other - maybe coincidental - detail is, that this film has its own Laura as well: and this one isn't less mysterious as the previous was 15 years earlier. After the Laura "met" last summer, my intertextual motivation (Bordwell: Narration in the Fiction Film, 1985) told me to be cautious against this "name".
So, the plot is a typical courtroom-story, from its finest: We have the brilliant James Stewart (the most sympathic character Hollywood ever had) as Paul Biegler from Iron City, the small-case lawyer (one day he was a district attorney, of course...), who gets involved into a hard case by a strange, seductive woman (Laura). He should defend Laura's husband (Ben Gazzara, ow yeah!), a murder, who killed Barney Quill, a man who raped his wife. If he raped at all... You remember, we have a Laura...
Just look at this talkative picture right in the beginning of the film: from left to right: a cagey lawyer, Jimmy Stewart, then the femme fatale-like Laura (of course behind sunglasses) and her husband, Gazzara the murder, who even himself doubts in his wife:
In the courtroom, during the trial of the case we are having more and more pieces of motifs and details, getting closer and closer to the decision of the 12 juries, but at the same time we reach less and less certainty about our characters' innocence or guilt. The movie doesn't want to judge, it lets you to make your decision. It gives what it promises: a detailed anatomy of a murder case. And it makes this really perfect!
Before watch it (for lawyers, defender or prosecutor is obligatory), just the usual small infos, these time with pictures:
- the movie's title was designed by Saul Bass, the uncrowned king of Hitchcock's and many others' collaborator (check his unbelievable impressive list here). His motivated association for Preminger' anatomy:
- the film's score was composed by Duke Ellington. Moreover he appears in the film as Pie Eye in a bar playing a four hand piano piece together with James Stewart! That's cool, really:
- and finally we have Mr. Dancer, the - almost perfect - prosecutor. Yep, George C. Scott aka Dr. Strangelove, personally:)
10/10
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