"Anatomy of a Murder" part of TCM's tribute to Otto Preminger tonight

This one has yet to click with me, Rick. I don’t exactly know why, but I think I’ll give it another chance tonight.

Lee Remick is one of my very favorites and who can’t help but like Jimmy Stewart.

One of my favorites.

I have it saved on my DVR along with Witness From the Prosecution. I rewatch both every few months.

It's so...tawdry.

I could never get into this movie. Ben G. was never my cup o' tea and Lee Remick, as good as she is, never quite registered with me in her roles as trashy antiheroines. I realize the movie must have been quite shocking back in '59 but it has lost steam since then, at least for me.

It currently has a 95 Metascore and like Bosely Crowther said in his review it's the best courtroom drama I've ever seen. Stewart was named Best Actor by the New York Film Critics and Lee Remick, George C. Scott, Ben Gazzara are at their best.

'AFTER watching an endless succession of courtroom melodramas that have more or less transgressed the bounds of human reason and the rules of advocacy, it is cheering and fascinating to see one that hews magnificently to a line of dramatic but reasonable behavior and proper procedure in a court. Such a one is "Anatomy of a Murder," which opened at the Criterion and the Plaza yesterday. It is the best courtroom melodrama this old judge has ever seen. Perhaps "melodrama" is the wrong word. Perhaps it would be better to say this is really a potent character study of a group of people involved in a criminal trial.' -NYTimes

1. It gets the law right

2. It still sizzles

3. It's not all Black and white

R1, I can’t stand Stewart.

Loved Eve Arden!

Stewart should have gotten a second Oscar for this (alternately, Jack Lemmon for Some Like It Hot). Heston rode the tide of Ben-Hir, in much the same way Russell Crowe did for Gladiator. Crowe was the more consistently strong actor, though Heston was worthy in Touch of Evil (despite the Mexican brownface), but neither really deserved the Oscar for these performances.

[quote]alternately, Jack Lemmon for Some Like It Hot

Most definitely.

REALLY LONG movie, and the end is anti-climactic. Though it was one movie I liked James Stewart in, can’t remember the other.

It's a masterpiece from the music to the acting to the plot twist. James Stewart makes a Brando look fake.

R11 I agree it's too long but It's 2h 41m running time is the same as Wicked's but where Anatomy is compelling Wicked feels unconscionably long.

At 160 minutes, Anatomy is longer than the subject warrants, but the pace seldom slackens—thanks to the competence of Director Otto Preminger.-TIME

With all its ambiguity, Upper Peninsula atmosphere, and great acting, this is my favorite courtroom drama and a real achievement for Preminger and screenwriter Wendell Mayes.

R9 Stewart shouldn’t have gotten his second Oscar for this. He should have gotten his third or fourth—Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo would all have been preferable to the actual winners, except possibly Donat’s Mr. Chips. Heston is also good in The Big Country the year before, and though that might be attributed to Wyler, he is better still, probably his career peak, in another western—Will Penny (1968). After a series of fairly dull “great man” performances, this is where awards attention for him would have been entirely justified.

Terrific film as both human observation and courtroom drama.

Lee Remick’s entrance in tight sweater and capri pants is sensational. She’s both beautiful and wildly feminine and sexy.

The ‘anti-climax’ final image that R11-refers to is brilliant and VERY climactic. Not to mention prescient. It prefigures the dumbing down of a young, disaffected post war America and the deification of trash culture that has brought us to where we are now.

This is Preminger's best film. The length of some of his films like Exodus, The Cardinal and In Harm's Way are unwieldy but I think Anatomy of a Murder justifies its length as it allows the audience to be the jury and to consider the facts like adults. The ambiguity and irresolution make this an outstanding courtroom drama.

It's the opposite of Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957) where we are never actually in the courtroom but spend the entire time of the film with the jury.

My mother was from the UP—a small mining town outside Marquette. The movie captures the feel of that place very well.

I worked in Marquette until I recently retired. It was fun to visit the locations where Anatomy was filmed in its entirety. Negaunee is where the lawyer/author lived and was used as Stewart's home1