{"id":18807,"date":"2026-07-21T21:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18807"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:54:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:54:28","slug":"anatomy-of-a-murder-1959-otto-preminger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18807","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Murder (1959, Otto Preminger)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an underdog law team winning a defense case that they maybe should’ve lost.<\/p>\n

Jimmy and his clients:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Jimmy takes the case of killer Ben Gazzara, who murdered the rapist of his wife Lee Remick. Now the prosecution (“Mitch” at first, until non-country lawyer George C. Scott takes over) wants to prove that Ben definitely shot the bartender, and anyway his wife is too hot for this town so she had it coming, and the defense (incl. underpaid secretary Eve Arden) wants to prove that the bartender is a rapist and he had it coming.<\/p>\n

Lee and the defense team:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

A couple far-fetched characters: Arthur O’Connell (Elvis’s dad\/uncle in Kissin’ Cousins<\/em>) is a hopeless drunk ex-lawyer who sobers up instantly and permanently to help Jimmy on the big case. And the manager at the bar (Kathryn Grant, dealer\/spy of The Phenix City Story<\/em>) is secretly the dead man’s daughter, a mess that George Scott steps in during cross-examination after she comes forth to help the defense.<\/p>\n

The moment George steps in it:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Trounced by Ben-Hur<\/em> at the oscars, but at least Duke Ellington won all the grammies. Classic orchestral or modern drone scores can be good sometimes, but most film directors should simply seek out the most artistically credible jazz band that will answer their phone calls.<\/p>\n

Duke and Jimmy jamming:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Sean Gilman<\/a>: “arty of the irst art”.<\/p>\n

Sallitt<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One of Preminger\u2019s big contributions here is his total comfort with the idea that the good guys and their mission are more or less on the side of evil (incarnated by Ben Gazzara), and their opponents are trying to do society a big favor by locking Gazzara up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[342,3507,1939,703,640,2555,889,2694,144],"class_list":["post-18807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1950s","tag-ben-gazzara","tag-courtroom","tag-george-c-scott","tag-jimmy-stewart","tag-lee-remick","tag-michigan","tag-otto-preminger","tag-revenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18834,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18807\/revisions\/18834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}