Dir. Otto Preminger
Starring: James Stewart, Lee
Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O’Connell
The legal thriller did not begin
with John Grisham. Before Grisham there was John D. Voelker. A retired Michigan
Supreme Court judge, Voelker started a new career as a novelist under the name
of Robert Travers. In 1952 he had been the defence attorney in a murder trial
up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This trial formed the basis of a book.
The resultant book became the film Anatomy
of a Murder, the “probably the finest pure trial movie ever” according to at
least one law professor.
In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Jimmy Stewart was the folksy hero protesting
his innocence before his peers in the United States Congress. Twenty years
later and James Stewart is Attorney Paul Biegler protesting the innocence of
his client before a murder jury in court. The folksiness remains, but this time it is
just a ploy to further his case.
Biegler has a small practice out
in the back-of-beyond (where bears scavenge on the edge of town and he can
slope off for fishing trips at will). He does not even have the income to pay
his secretary’s wages. But then he is asked to defend Frederick Manion (Ben
Gazzara), an army lieutenant charged with shooting a bar landlord dead. His
motive? Said landlord raped his wife. But murder is murder. Biegler’s only shot
is to convince a jury that Manion was insane. But this is not plain sailing.
Paul’s opponent, his replacement
as DA, is Mitch Lodwick (Brooks West), a man more concerned with redecorating
his office than being on top of his brief. While he might not be a first class
lawyer he is smart enough to recognise when he is out of his depth. He brings
in the State Assistant District Attorney, Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) to
help prosecute the case. Dancer is as clever, calm and cunning as Biegler. Both
of them know what ‘tricks’ to pull to help influence a jury. The trial becomes
a battle of wits between them, with the most used phrases being “Objection!” and “Objection over-ruled!” I don’t know how often objections are
really raised in American courtrooms, but they seem to come along like buses in
legal thrillers, and Anatomy really
sets the standard. Biegler brings in a psychiatrist to swear that Manion was
acting under “irresistible impulse”;
the prosecution bring in their own to disagree. Each have witnesses of their
own to bolster their case, and the other’s to destroy.
 |
| Disorder in court: Judge Weaver says pants to Biegler, Lodwick & Dancer |
The audience, like the jury, never actually get the objective truth of the matter. We see more than they, but yet we cannot say for certain what the true course of events is. Is
Biegler has a job to do. If he
doesn’t, he doesn’t get paid. He is, in this matter, mercenary. He warns his
clients to tell the truth upon the stand, but it is he who casually drops the
ideas in Manion’s head that lead him to make the statements he wants to hear: I
must have been mad… I was crazy… I was insane…” By threatening to walk out he
essentially coaches Manion to enter an insanity defence (what Parnell refers to
as “The Well-Known Lecture”). It is
only once he has said this that Paul can put together a defence for him. And he
is willing to employ all the aforementioned tricks to help that defence. When
he goes too far the judge over-rules him; his questions are stricken from the
record and the jury are asked to disregard the previous comments. Manion asks how
they can disregard something they have already heard. Paul’s smiling answer? “They can’t.” He employs his humour and
charm to win over the jury – as well as just a liberal sprinkling of folksy
corn, implying that “I’m just a humble
country lawyer trying to do the best I can against this brilliant prosecutor
from the big city of Lansing
The tricks are fun and
entertaining, but what really counts is research. Lawyers have to put the
leg-work in. We see Paul and Parnell poring over tome after tome in the
library. This finds them the precedent that they can hang their defence upon.
Without this they had nothing. It is clear that this precedent is new to
Lodwick. Dancer states that he is aware of it. Is this just bravado or
insouciance? Or does he actually know of its existence but hoped that Biegler
wouldn’t? And finally the prosecution case is brought crashing down at the last
resort due to one simple issue: the defence knew one fact more about a witness
than they did. What becomes clear is that the law is not even; a favourable verdict
relies to a great extent upon quite how smart one’s lawyer is, how skilled they
are in the courtroom, and how much legwork they are willing to put in.
Tricks and research and all the
other attributes of a lawyer aside however, at the end of the day the result of
any trial is out of their hands: it is in the hands of the jury. Parnell waxes
lyrical on this theme:
“Twelve people go off into a room: twelve different minds, twelve different hearts, from twelve different walks of life; twelve sets of eyes, ears, shapes, and sizes. And these twelve people are asked to judge another human being as different from them as they are from each other. And in their judgment, they must become of one mind - unanimous. It's one of the miracles of Man's disorganized soul that they can do it, and in most instances, do it right well. God bless juries.”But people are subjective creatures. Hence the requirement to influence them to look at the evidence in certain ways.
This film is not a grim portrayal
of crime and justice; there is plenty of humour along the way. As Judge Weaver
comments, “The attorneys will provide the
wisecracks.” But not just the attorneys – everyone adds something whether
it comes from the booze-addled Parnell, Paul’s sassy and long-suffering
secretary (Eve Arden), or Judge Weaver himself (Joseph Welsh, a real-life
lawyer who represented the army during the McCarthyite anti-Communist
witch-hunts, famously crying out “Have
you no sense of decency sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
) as he struggles to keep control over the lawyers. When the matter of Laura
Manion’s missing underwear is raised he is concerned that there is “a certain light connotation attached to the
word ‘panties’. Can we find another name for them?” Dancer hesitates and replies
that “When I was overseas during the war,
Your Honour, I learned a French word. I’m afraid that might be slightly
suggestive.” Judge Weaver sighs and comments that “Most French words usually are.”
And so the word “panties” is used in court. And the jury and the public
fall about with laughter. And the judge has to caution them to restrain their
laughs as they are hearing a case which concerns the death of one man and the
possible incarceration of another. Oh – and a rape. Laura Manion has to sit there
while the crowd behind her snicker about her panties, allegedly lost during her
ordeal. But the judge never mentions that in his warning. In fact, the
prosecution try to keep the rape out of the case altogether and focus just on
the matter of Frederick Manion shooting Quill dead (as Biegler complains,
trying to “separate the motive from the
act” is “like trying to take the core
from an apple without breaking the skin”). Throughout the issue of rape is
treated pretty dismissively. The all-male legal establishment can see why a
fellow would be pretty upset about another man raping his wife, but the issue
of rape is a side-show to them. Plus, in modern day parlance, one could argue
that Laura Manion was “asking for it”.
A horrific notion, but this is a 1950s film based upon a 1950s novel that was
itself based upon a 1950s crime. A woman dressing in flattering clothing and
being sociable with other men is seen, by and large, as evidence of consent.
Even if she was openly looking to commit adultery the prevailing view is that
she is to blame should a man get the wrong idea. There is an entire etiquette
of clothing that was alien to me. She was not wearing a girdle – shock horror!
Going out bare-legged carries all sorts of connotations. Dancer puts it to her on
the stand that if she was not wearing a girdle, then maybe she was not wearing
panties either, that maybe she habitually went out panty-less when she was
looking to pick up men. It is a brutal cross-examination of someone who alleges
that they were raped. One would hope that this sort of thing does not occur in
court these days! It might seem dated by today’s standards, but in its day it
totally challenged the Hays Code; the film was even banned in Chicago. Talk of
rape, penetration, sperm, panties and contraception could be heard in a
courtroom, but hearing them in a cinema challenged public decency.
What have I learnt about Michigan
If I’m thinking of Michigan I think of Detroit Michigan Iron City
Yet for all of its rugged
outdoorsiness it has the trappings of American civilisation such as the rule of
law, courthouses and smart lawyers.
In comparison, Lansing Detroit
Can we go there?
The film was set in the locations
where the original crime did – up on the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan (sandwiched between Lakes Michigan and Superior).
The original 1952 murder occurred in the Lumberjack Tavern, Big Bay. Quill’s bar was actually shot just one block away,
in the Thunder Bay Inn. The Thunder Bay was once owned by Henry Ford, and favoured workers
were treated to vacations here as rewards; even this far away from Detroit Ford
still shaped Michigan. The community of Big Bay was itself renamed Thunder Bay
for the purposes of the film. Visitors to the Lumberjack Tavern can still see
the body outline on the floor (the one that was so iconically stylized in Saul
Bass’s poster for Anatomy). The Perkins Park Campground
just outside of town was the location of the Manions’
trailer.
The scene where Laura is dancing
– and Paul is playing piano alongside the jazz band of ‘Pie-Eye’ (actually the
great Duke Ellington, who composed the music for the film) – was shot at the Mt. Shasta Lodge in Michigamme.
Overall Rating: 4/5
