This is why I think "Anatomy of A Murder" is the best courtroom
drama ever made. First, the case.
Before the movie begins, Lieutenant Frederick Manion
shot and killed innkeeper Barney Quill, one hour
after Manion's wife, Laura, arrives home bruised
saying Quill raped and beat her in the woods.
The District Attorney is going to prosecute Manion
for first degree murder, so Manion hires Paul Biegler
to defend him.
Second: The complications
In a normal courtroom drama, you'd be encouraged to
root for the protagonist's client to win for some kind of justice
to prevail, but director Otto Preminger does everything
he can to remove justice from the equation
The case itself is ambiguous
Clearly it was a revenge killing but revenge
is no justification for murder
Will the jury or the audience
be sympathetic enough to go along with the claim of temporary
insanity
"... the unwritten law on my side"
"The unwritten law is a myth, Lieutenanat"
Preminger challenges
that sympathy by making Manion generally unlikable, even cruel.
The rape itself is never shown. The murder victim
and alleged rapist is never introduced. And Preminger
adds doubt by making Laura flirty and clearly
unhappy in her marriage. What's more, it's made very obvious
that Biegler is not interested in the case for its
moral content, but for the legal challenge that it represents.
That keeps us from identifying too strongly
with the great Jamie Steward
"What you need is a legal peg
so that the jury can hang up there something on your behalf
What's your legal excuse?
So what's the payoff of all this work, of designing a case that's
messy. A defendant who's unsympathetic,
a lawyer who's in it only for the challenge
What happens when justice is removed
what are you left with?
Well, if you're not telling me to cough out
what are you telling me to do?
"I'm not telling you to do anything. I just want you to understand
the letter of the law." That's it, the law, that's what makes "Anatomy of a Murder"
so special and unique. It's a movie
carefully designed to make the law visible.
And what does the law look like? Well, it looks a lot like
narrative. "What the defense is trying to do
is introduce some sensational material
for the purposes of obscuring the real issues."
"Your Honor, how can the jury accurately estimate the testimony
being given here unless they first know the reason
behind this whole trial?"
Each lawyer is trying to curve out
a story from the evidence. The prosecution
wants the jury to see the murder and the defense
wants the jury
to see the rape. The prosecution
wants the audience to see
the act, the defense wants the audience to see the motive.
And in their efforts to place each fact in their desired context,
the importance of words becomes more
and more and more apparent.
"... the attorney for the people asked you if Miss Manion was tight
and you said that she was high.
Speaking as a bartender, what's the distinction between the two?"
"I don't think I understand"
"Well, when we say a person's tight
we usually mean
that they're a little stupid with a drink
isn't that so?"
"I guess that's about it, yes"
"And if they're high, they're gay and enjoying themselves
"Yes"
"Then that's the word for 'Manion was happy'
well is there anything wrong with being happy?
"No."
The prosecution attempts to paint a picture of
Laura Manion as promiscuous but Biegler
drills down into the vocabulary to show
that suggestion from a different linguistic point of view
"What would you call a man with an isatiable penchant for women?"
Earlier in the trial Biegler made the same witness describe Barney Quill
by cycling through synonyms until he reached the word
"Wolf?"
"Sure, just slipped my mind.
Once Mrs Manion's
panties become relevant to the trial the judge
asks the lawyers if they know an alternate term because
of the juvenile affect that word is having on
the courtroom. [Laughters]
"There isn't anything comic about a pair of panties
which figure in the violent
death of one man
and the possible incarceration of another."
Watching from this unique perspective, this movie
about a murder trial transforms into a
a granular study about the construction of stories
how language itself, how every word
is loaded with history and when you choose a word
you're choosing its history too. All the stories that go
with it. Preminger deliberately guides us into
this place, understanding I think that the courtroom
is a zone where all this mechanics of narrative
play out and that if you could just remove that sense of justice
those mechanics would become clear
in a singular way.
"Anatomy of a Murder" zooms in to show how story
is latent into language, intonation, and gesture
and it zooms out to show how story
is embedded in a fundamental part of
the practice of law. It makes sense that the
thing which essentially locks in the victory for Biegler isn't some
new piece of evidence but a moment in which his opponent's
story is revealed to be unworkable.