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Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
 
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Directed
by:
Otto Preminger |
COUNTRY
USA |
GENRE
Drama |
NORWEGIAN
TITLE
En
studie i mord |
RUNNING
TIME
140
minutes |
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Produced
by:
Otto Preminger |
Written
by based on the novel by Robert Traver:
Wendell Mayes |
Review
This overwhelmingly
thorough and slow courtroom drama is, embodied through Jimmy Stewart's
gloriously suave performance, as stylish and classy as movies come. It
starts off in the most refined fashion, letting us get to know the
characters through a seemingly arbitrary look-in. Preminger unfolds his
scenes is if he were Don Juan making love to a woman; gentle, firmly and
with the greatest of confidence. He makes the slowest of build-ups turn
out as one of the most appealing of build-ups, and the actors revel in
the process. During the courtroom scenes, however, things sometimes run
from smooth to somewhat quirky, and some scenes become a tad to
frivolous (the laughing on the soundtrack should have being kept
in a more low-key fashion) . But still, Anatomy of a Murder
remains a well-balanced and highly interesting encounter with the
American legal system of the fifties, and some very strongly portrayed
characters in it. And exactly when you'd start to worry about the level
of authenticity, the movie brings on George C. Scott in one of his first
screen roles; a fantastic one at that. His cross-examining of witnesses
even makes the close-up cameraman shiver. And his wonderful feud with
Jimmy Stewart will forever stand as a great legacy to both.
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