Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

In Anatomy of a Murder, the defense's case depends not on an account of what happened, but why it happened—was the criminal defendant seized by an “irresistible impulse” that made him commit the crime?  For the jurors, that question is: how bad was the event that caused the irresistible impulse?

It hinges on a vague point of law that reflects certain values.  In what context do people generally think it makes sense to be violent?  It’s no coincidence that our defendant is a veteran of the Korean War: the defense attorney, Paul Biegler, has a witness make a direct comparison between the conditions of war that produce “irresistible impulses” and the events leading up to the murder.  

A lawyer who wants to exploit notions of when violence is excusable, or even justifiable, must embody those notions.  The jury isn’t going to believe a story about when it makes sense to explode if the lawyer telling the story doesn’t seem to care.  The lawyer has to visualize it for them.  So, even besides getting the witnesses to admit to certain details, Biegler slams the table, he shouts, and he pokes fun at the other side. 

What the lawyers have to look like becomes a trickier issue near the end of the movie.  Biegler’s best friend, Parnell McCarthy, is a washed-up lawyer who spends the movie trying to help Biegler with his case to recover his sense of self-worth.  After the trial closes, McCarthy delivers a monologue extolling the virtues of juries.  By this point, we should know that what he's saying is simply wrong.  If you've been paying attention, this speech should jar you.  The film is not subtle about how trial practice consists of insinuation, grandstanding, and other manipulations.  But McCarthy believes in it.  In his eyes, there’s something noble about it.

All that goes to show is that lawyers aren’t immune to their own tricks.  When lawyers try to tell people what’s right and that the law supports it, what’s stopping them from convincing themselves?  I wonder if it's a coincidence that the character who says this is called "McCarthy," while the judge in this film is one of the lawyers who faced off with Joseph McCarthy in real life.  Biegler’s counterpart in this film is Claude Dancer, a prosecutor played by George C. Scott.  Biegler and Dancer mostly steal the show, so it can be easy to forget Lodwick, the other prosecutor.  But Lodwick is, more or less, McCarthy’s counterpart. 

Biegler and Dancer know exactly what they’re doing.  Lodwick’s courtroom demeanor doesn’t resemble theirs: he comes across as shocked and flustered whenever he objects to something.  It suggests that, like McCarthy, he’s a little more credulous about the nobility of lawyering.  When Lodwick objects to Biegler’s tactics, his words and mannerisms are overwrought.  Even when Biegler concedes the objections, he makes Lodwick look silly.

The events of Anatomy of a Murder are influenced by many things, and the film places none at the center.  It doesn’t need to, with how well it manages the shifts in tone and energy needed for its focus to smoothly transition from one subject to another.  It runs on the strength of performance and touches like Biegler dragging another character from light into shadow, or the blocking in the courtroom.  Its approach to some elements is subtle, but often it’s not.  What mainly strikes me is way the film moves about in the absence of any single governing force, and the implications of McCarthy’s behavior.  Otherwise, anything I could say is better said in the film itself.