- Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Critics and scholars often describe the directorial style of Otto Preminger as “objective,” and it is not hard to see why. In films such as Laura (1944) and Advise and Consent (1962), he remains resolutely observant, chronicling how people—their subjectivities always just beyond the reach of the viewer—negotiate with one another in time and space. Preminger constructs with his camera a world in which individuals navigate their way through life and its systems with cards close to their chest. His carefully choreographed long takes feel so inevitable in their elegant ambiguities, though, that one can easily forget that Preminger’s objective gaze shapes the reality of his films as completely as those of more flamboyant stylists of the late classical period in Hollywood filmmaking (Hitchcock, Ray, Minnelli). Nor should the distance implied by his gaze be mistaken for detachment. Preminger may cast an occasionally jaundiced eye on the institutions and individuals at the center of his films, but his oeuvre is more overtly marked by a productive ambivalence. His characters’ unknowable nature [End Page 240] becomes the ultimate marker of Preminger’s respect for the mysteries of the human soul.
There may not be a more powerful example of Preminger’s formidable talents than Anatomy of a Murder (1959), released in a superb new edition by the Criterion Collection. Based on the best-selling true-crime novel by Robert Traver (the nom de plume of Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker), the film offers a vision of the American legal system that celebrates its deliberative complexity, while remaining all too aware of its capacity for uncertainty and outright manipulation. An army lieutenant, Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), has been arrested for killing local tavern owner Barney Quill, who had allegedly raped his wife, Laura (Lee Remick), earlier that night. His case comes to the attention of Paul Biegler (James Stewart), a former district attorney who has settled into a complacent life as a small-town lawyer after losing his last reelection bid. Prodded to meet with the Manions by his hard-drinking colleague and friend Parnell Mc-Carthy (Arthur O’Connell), Biegler becomes intrigued by the legal nuances of Federick’s case. He claims to have been temporarily insane at the time of the murder, yet he also had enough control to murder Quill nearly an hour after the alleged rape. Are the Manions simply lying? Preminger certainly offers enough heated looks and pregnant pauses between the couple to hint at darker rumblings churning underneath their stated story. Critic Nick Pinkerton puts it thus in his perceptive essay on the film, included in the Criterion release: “The dark, undiscovered center of the film is the Manions’ relationship, drawn in dots of sinister implication, a dangerous game with the rule book missing.” Then again, Frederick may have actually been suffering from a more complicated form of temporary insanity, deemed by a psychiatrist as an “irresistible impulse.”
Biegler, then, does not take Frederick’s case because he necessarily believes in his client, but neither does he do it solely to fill the coffers of his struggling law practice. He seems genuinely invested in the challenging mechanics of the case as well as the level of in-court performance that he has to give to sway the jury’s opinion. Does this make Biegler a precocious student of legal detail or a say-anything shyster? The question remains unanswered, not because Preminger coyly refuses to answer as much as it never seems to have crossed his mind. In Anatomy of a Murder, the noble pursuit of justice and equity before the law cannot be separated from the bluster and flourish of courtroom histrionics. Both Biegler and the unflappable prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) engage in bursts of calculated outrage and slippery lines of questioning. Viewers naturally align with our protagonist, all the more so because he’s played with such understated grace and coy wit by Stewart. Yet we also raise our eyebrows at him sometimes, wondering whether we can wholly trust his tactics or know his intentions...