Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Directed by

Otto Preminger

Genre

drama film, crime film, trial film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 40m

Rated

NR

Rating

7.8 of 10 from 1,179 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A small-town lawyer takes on the defense of a man who killed someone he says raped his wife. The story follows the legal battle in a courtroom setting.

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What happens

Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American legal drama film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was based on the 1958 novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name of Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney. The film stars James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Eve Arden, George C. Scott, Arthur O'Connell, Kathryn Grant, Brooks West (Arden's husband), Orson Bean, and Murray Hamilton. The judge was played by Joseph N. Welch, a real-life lawyer famous for dressing down Joseph McCarthy during the Army–McCarthy hearings. It has a musical score by Duke Ellington, who also appears in the film. It has been described by Michael Asimow, UCLA law professor and co-author of Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (2006), as "probably the finest pure trial movie ever made". In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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