It’s the 1950s, and a man has been murdered in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There’s no question about that. Lieutenant Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) has been arrested and confesses to the act. The question, however, is whether or not Manion was justified. According to his wife Laura (Lee Remick), the deceased—a local barkeep named Barney Quill—raped her, which sent Frederick into a rage in which he shot Barney down. Nearly three hours later, we’ll know the jury’s verdict, but does that upheld virtue of the American legal system ever fully allow us an understanding of the truth? Is it then certified that Frederick was or was not vindicated in his violence? Or is it simply what a handful of people determined, based upon days and days of showboating arguments made by prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) and defense attorney Paul Biegler (James Stewart), with numerous pedestrians interrogated under the high pressure of the witness stand?

“Anatomy of a Murder proves to be not so much an investigation of a murder case as it is an incisive exploration of a trial’s ups and downs and the tricks used to shift perspectives. A performance can change what’s thought to be straightforward and morals have no place where winning is involved,” writes Maria of Otto Preminger’s robust and rollicking 1959 courtroom drama, which Linus insists makes you “[feel] like you’re inside the courtroom yourself.” The court has always been an understandable draw for cinema, from early pictures like 1957’s Witness for the Prosecution to recent cases such as The Burial from 2023. As the flamboyant, fame-loving attorney Billy Flynn explains in Chicago, it’s a stage full of splendiferous razzle-dazzle, a three-ring circus with lots of flash, and audiences eat it up—from those on the jury benches to those of us watching on the big screen.

The son of a renowned lawyer in Austria, Otto Preminger earned himself a law degree from the University of Vienna while simultaneously studying his true passion: theater. That understanding of the ins and outs of the courtroom, along with the stage itself, fuses into Anatomy with a play-like sensibility that keeps the audience as a passive observer of this clinical orchestration of what a true court case would feel like. As Tom states, “What’s particularly remarkable about the film is that it doesn’t beat around the bush or pull the wool over our eyes at any point; rather, it takes an objective stance and openly presents the facts as they are for us to mull over.”

Perhaps that air of authenticity is aided by the fact that Anatomy of a Murder is indeed based on an actual crime. Writer Wendell Mayes adapted the film’s script from the 1957 novel of the same name by John D. Voelker. Using the pen name Robert Traver, Voelker wrote the book as a recounting of a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney for an army lieutenant who shot a bartender after the man had allegedly raped the lieutenant’s wife. Just like in Anatomy, the lieutenant pled not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, with a psychiatrist testifying that he suffered an “irresistible impulse”, a phrase that is put under much scrutiny in the movie. Even minute details, such as a specific letter delivered at the very end of Anatomy, were pulled from Voelker’s true experience. That attention to the real world plays a significant part in the enduring resonance of Preminger’s work.

This sinewy relationship with morality is part and parcel with this stage of James Stewart’s career, where he toyed with the dark side in a way that directly pushed against his wholesome image fostered by films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Shop Around the Corner. Returning from World War II with psychological scars and plenty of military accolades, Stewart delved into moral rot with characters looking for redemption in the westerns of Anthony Mann and the many objectionable men he played for Alfred Hitchcock. Anatomy of a Murder fits this mold, as The Sweet East writer Nick Pinkerton describes in his essay for The Criterion Collection’s release of Anatomy how “the actor’s warbly candor is here a mask to be taken off and put back on at will—in any scene, much of the pleasure comes from gauging the distance between the line Biegler is giving and what he’s actually thinking, the degree to which his courtroom outbursts are actual eruptions or kabuki distractions meant to provide some room to strategize.”

Anatomy of a Murder was nominated for seven Academy Awards, among them a Best Leading Actor nod for Stewart (the final nomination of his career) and Best Supporting Actor for his courtroom adversary, George C. Scott. The first nomination in the future Oscar winner Scott’s career (back before he called the ceremony a “meat parade” and began refusing his accolades), Anatomy was only the actor’s second appearance in a feature film period, and he comes in swinging like a bat out of hell, with Meyoan noting “a courtroom cannot be more exciting than seeing James Stewart and George C. Scott disrupt and bump heads with each other.”

Out of the many disruptions presented throughout the trial are frank discussions on the specifics of language, one of the most defining and surprising elements of Anatomy of a Murder. Despite taking place within the era of Hollywood’s restrictive Hays Code, Preminger’s film broaches taboo conversations around sexual assault and victim-blaming, with Variety even stating that this was the first time in any American film with the Production Code seal that words like “contraceptive”, (sexual) “climax” and “spermatogenesis” were spoken. Rumor has it that even James Stewart’s own father was offended by the language contained in the film, going so far as to take an ad out in the local newspaper encouraging people not to see it. In the most popular review of Anatomy of a Murder on Letterboxd, liam writes, “there are fewer things more surreal than hearing someone say the word ‘bitch’ in a Hollywood film from 1959.” And if you think that’s alarming, just wait until you reach the scene where Dancer asks Laura on the witness stand if she often goes out without wearing any panties. Zoë brings a deeper analysis to this aspect of the film, reflecting that “the way the story handles rape felt much more like [an] exposé of rape culture in the justice system.”

If that’s not enough to convince you that Preminger, who fled his homeland of Bukovina with his Jewish family when the region was invaded by Russia during World War I, wasn’t putting up with any of this fascistic nonsense, consider who he hired to play Anatomy of a Murder’s judge: Joseph N. Welch. A real-life judge who had never worked as an actor (and would never act after this), Welch became a household name as counsel for the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings. Welch famously stood up to McCarthy and his aide Roy Cohn during the hearings, stating, “Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” This moment is often cited as a turning point in the fall of McCarthyism—and Preminger had the guts to go ahead and hire Welch to act in his film, specifically playing a character who acts as the ultimate arbiter of decency. They really don’t make ’em like Preminger anymore, and who knows where cinema would be without him, and without Anatomy of a Murder.