Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Directed by Otto Preminger
Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
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What critics compared Anatomy of a Murder to
Sorkin’s didacticism is often his own worst enemy, but he mostly keeps his worst instincts in check here, and there are times when he almost seems to channel the great Otto Preminger, whose Anatomy of a Murder is perhaps the gold standard for courtroom dramas.
The courtroom thriller used to be a staple of big-studio "adult" product, and the genre produced some notable --Â some would have said "important" --Â pictures over the course of its long heyday, from " Witness for the Prosecution " and " Anatomy of a Murder " in the '50s to " The Verdict " and, God help us, " Jagged Edge " in the '80s.
After all, Paul Newman had to struggle to stay sober in “The Verdict”; James Stewart had to go against a big-city lawyer in “Anatomy of a Murder.”
However, now they’re taking on personas evoking characters from titles like Anatomy of a Murder or All the President’s Men.
Like Anatomy of a Murder, Catch Me If You Can, or The Cremator, Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma immediately alerts viewers they’re about to watch a classic through an extraordinary opening credits sequence.
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More recently consider how Otto Preminger’s 1959 “Anatomy of a Murder” (starring James Stewart) portrays the murder of a man by the husband claims raped his wife.
The opening credits evoke the Saul Bass titles from films like Anatomy of a Murder .
While it never reaches the level of Anatomy of a Murder, which is probably the high point in this genre, it shares with that film a complex view of the judicial system that makes the multiple plot twists part of an overall vision, and Paul Winfield rivals Joseph Welch in the earlier film by making the most of (read hamming up) his juicy part as the judge.