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Mark T. B. Carroll ([personal profile] mtbc) wrote2016-01-23 05:38 pm
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Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

I watched Anatomy of a Murder (1959), a courtroom drama closely based on a true crime. It was originally received with great praise but, viewed with modern eyes, I would judge it to be slow-moving and rather conventional and unsurprising, often even hackneyed, except for how it somewhat uncomfortably shoehorns jazz music into the story.

Still, credit where it's due: The progress of the court case is rather more plausible than it could have been, explicit matters are handled surprisingly bluntly for a mainstream film of its time, I thought Lee Remick very well cast, and the moral situation isn't simple: we have everything from witness coaching to ambiguity about what did happen and should now happen. For its time I expect it did an effective job in helping to push the entertainment envelope in a worthwhile direction and, even competing with modern media serving more jaded, sophisticated tastes, it still kept me engaged.