I’m a sucker for courtroom dramas.
Whether the outcomes are absurdly arresting (Al Pacino’s over-the-top outrage in ‘… And Justice for All’) or laughably incoherent (big toss-up between the fates of Ashley Judd in ‘Double Jeopardy’ or Madonna in ‘Body of Evidence’), I can’t help but get engrossed in the process: the legal maneuvering, the more byzantine the better; the sparring of evidentiary depositions, inevitably leading to last-minute surprises and rediscovered precedents; those gratifying reveals that still leave me with bated breath when I already know the verdicts. Maybe my dad was right: I should’ve been a lawyer. And I just might have been if in my late teens someone had shown me this master-class from Otto Preminger. James Stewart plays a folksy yet wily former D.A. facing off against the steely brilliance of George C. Scott’s state prosecutor in a rape-begets-murder trial whose verity comes with clues to uncover, irresistible impulses to resolve, moralistic baggage to unpack. The latter matter applied both on and off film: frank dialogue about climaxing and spermatogenesis and panties sparked Production Code/Legion of Decency furor and regional banning of the movie, which led to legal battles all their own. What’s rarely disputed is the film’s flawlessness: superbly acted, starkly photographed, steadfastly directed — and very snazzily scored. Beguilingly so, because it was composed by two musical geniuses, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, and performed by Ellington’s magnificent orchestra. An excellent spin with or without images, it not only enlivens the trial’s unraveling twists, it wound up heavily influencing the soon-to-erupt Nouvelle Vague and innovators like Godard and Truffaut. Duke’s delectables add immeasurably to what is, if not the first book* in the Old Testament of Courtroom Cinema, then surely the second.
#SoundtrackSunday 022
‘Anatomy of a Murder’
Columbia, 1959; Soundtrack Factory pressing, 2018
d: Otto Preminger
(*That’d be ’12 Angry Men’ … no?)