I automatically associate Otto Preminger with the visage of a bald, bellowing tyrant, a brutish mental picture that contradicts the director's best films: low-key, oddly moving character studies never less than startling in their ambivalence towards good and evil. I suppose it's not unlike comparing quiet, unassuming David Lynch to the more hellish aspects of his filmography, yet there's something about Preminger's reputed military approach (his credo was, "I don't get ulcers, I cause them"; he made child actors cry on cue by threatening the safety of their parents) that runs philosophically counter to the objective stories he continually presented moviegoers, who never had it so good.
Anatomy of a Murder, considered by many to be Preminger's finest hour, has an additional blithe quality that officially separates the union of art and artist; if there is indeed an obsessive behind it, his presence has been suppressed to the point of near-invisibility. The film is told in a manner that befits its small-town Michigan setting as well as James Stewart's laconic turn as Paul "Pauly" Biegler, the country lawyer who has two loves: "fishing, and an old fella called Parnell." (Stewart's postwar performances are so much more layered than his early work for Lubitsch and Capra.)
As his business associate, the alcoholic Parnell (Arthur O'Connell, very touching in portraying his character's stab at sobriety) encourages Biegler to take the case of Lt. Manion (Ben Gazzara), a short-tempered army drone accused of murdering his coquettish wife's (Lee Remick) alleged rapist. The People put Pauly up against Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), a hotshot State lawyer who looks down haughtily on the self-professed bumpkin's temporary insanity defense.
Eagle-faced Scott, demonstrating a slow-burn intensity that places him in our minds at the forefront of even those scenes in which he doesn't speak, plays one of the greatest foes Stewart ever faced. Dancer underestimates the effectiveness of Pauly's unpolished courtroom theatrics--yelling and sarcasm and references to undergarments that entertain the hell out of the jury--but neither Preminger nor his writers overstate the (obvious) differences between cities and counties in detailing the conflicting styles of the two men.
When the femme fatale reveals her name as Laura, it seems a nod to the title heroine of Preminger's popular noir. However, Remick never quite achieves Gene Tierney's animal charisma (I recall lusting after Tierney even as she drowned a sweet paraplegic boy in Leave Her to Heaven), and there are times when she comes off as the understudy for an actress with more womanly magnetism. (She was, in fact, a substitute for the older Lana Turner.) Perhaps amongst a less seasoned cast, Remick's girlish charms would cast a stronger spell.
Her part was well devised, though; Laura Manion remains symbolic of every female condemned, sometimes by the justice system, for flaunting what she's got. Based on a non-fictional book by jurist John D. Voelker (under the nom de plume Robert Traver), Wendell Mayes' screenplay is brilliantly conceived on so many levels, making jurors of the audience by thoroughly dissecting the events that led up to the trial (always through dialogue; Preminger was not fond of flashbacks, to this movie's benefit especially) and, moreover, by expertly dividing our sympathies. (Although we're not following the prosecutors, we know they have the better argument.)
Anatomy of a Murder was shot on genuine locations, not sets, still an uncommon practice outside of European and independent cinema today; Michigan locals were hired as extras. (No wonder the au natural Cahiers du Cinema crowd held Preminger in high regard.) This insistence on realistic mise-en-scène (which, I should add, also includes detailed background action and an absence of dictatorial music--Duke Ellington's scatty "score" is placed on the soundtrack diagetically, i.e. only when the logistics of a scene demand it, such as a club setting), along with Preminger's trademark defiance of censorship policies (Anatomy of a Murder marked the first time the words "panties" and "bitch" (in the context of an insult) were uttered on-screen) and an abhorrence for melodrama, have kept the film fresh and involving for forty-one years now.
According to Columbia Tri-Star's DVD version, the black-and-white Anatomy of a Murder still looks as good as it did back then, too. The print used for this transfer is remarkably free from age-related damage, and the soundtrack, while one of low fidelity, is not prone to pops and hisses. I should point out that the video portion is overly sharpened, compromising its authentic crispness, and the full-frame image (true to the negative's aspect ratio) has not been tricked-up for anamorphic sets. Extras: scant "vintage advertising," a nice, if pointless, montage of production stills accompanied by Ellington's noodling, talent files, and (worn) trailers for Anatomy..., Philadelphia, and A Few Good Men.-Bill Chambers
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