7.
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
It’s nice that Otto Preminger now seems to be seen as the filmmaker he clearly was: a deft producer who also happened to be an excellent director who frequently snuck subversive attitudes and jabs into his pictures. Anatomy of a Murder is probably my outright favorite Preminger picture: it has a brilliant Jimmy Stewart performance that’s, in its way, every bit as wily as his work in Vertigo, potentially career best work by George C. Scott as Stewart’s rival, and a confident tone of barely checked survival-of-the-fittest anarchy.
The joke of Anatomy of a Murder, which follows Stewart’s nearly retired attorney as he defends a murder suspect (Ben Gazzara) who is clearly guilty, is that the folksy, old-school lawyer is the calculating slickster, and that the villain, primarily personified by Scott, is, by default, the hero, not that either seems to much care who happens to be in the right. The picture is a long (nearly three hours) big dick contest between two brilliant warriors of the courtroom who’ve seemed to pick the battle itself out of a hat.
That running time could be awfully laborious for this sort of thing, but Preminger’s slow burn, long-take, tracking-shot approach eases you in and effortlessly commands the entire enterprise: Anatomy of a Murder is a model of how to “open” a play up in a fashion that’s organic to the material; and the attitude here is darkly funny and ruthlessly modern, more modern, in fact, than most of the “uplifting” courtroom tales we see today. Preminger’s trial isn’t about the truth, but the delivery.
I happened to see this on the big screen at a revival house and was astounded at how phenomenal it was, and how it essentially invented the modern courtroom precedural. The score was great. The UP never looked so good.
I’m jealous, and I agree. I think a lot of people think of Anatomy as this big, fun movie, and it is, but its also more than that. And the performances really are top to bottom wonderful.