1959 whodunnit, dir. Otto Preminger, James Stewart, Lee Remick:
IMDb. The soldier killed the
bartender who raped his wife. But is it really that simple?
Mostly, yes. There are parts at the beginning of this story that
make it resemble classic noir: did Quill really rape Laura, or did he
commit the unforgivable sin of turning her down? Did Manion really
shoot Quill, or did Laura set him up to take the fall for her? Lee
Remick's excellent performance as an unconvincing flooze, flirting
with anything with a pulse, put her entire story inb question. And
then in turn I found myself wondering whether Stewart's Paul Biegler
is really as naïve as he appears, or whether he's seeing how far Laura
will go to try to trap him.
But while that might have been an interesting film, it's not this
film; I didn't know going in that the 1958 novel from which the film
was adapted was written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D.
Voelker under the pen name of Robert Traver, based on a real murder
case in which he was the defense attorney. The physical actions turn
out to be much as they appear. The question before the court, and much
of our time is spent in the court, is whether the sex (that everyone
agrees happened) was rape, and whether Manion might have been acting
under an "irresistible impulse" and thus not be guilty of murder.
(In a modern setting of course we would hope to say "even if she is
the local good time girl she gets to say no when she wants to", but
that's clearly not the style of the time, or even generally accepted
now.)
(It seems to me that someone prone to uncontrollable murderous
impulse, when presented with a situation that might plausibly recur,
should perhaps be discouraged in some way from doing that again. But
I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on the Internet.)
I like much early jazz, and particularly early Duke Ellington. Alas,
this is from later in his career, after someone had told him that he
didn't need to be constrained by time signatures and musical
structure. Clearly many people like this style, but it's not for me.
While this film is apparently used in some law schools as an example
of the steps through which a prosecution moves, there are some
procedural problems for me. The coaching by Biegler of his witness is
fairly extreme, and the suggestion that the inmates have been offered
lighter sentences in order to make false testimony against the
defendant even more so—and something that's out of character from
Dancer (the excellent George C. Scott!). As we've met him, he's meant
to seem wily but not crooked, the dark mirror of Biegler present to
make a legitimately tough opponent, not an outright cheat.
The important thing here for me is that we never see the actual
events. All we have is the various testimonies, and nobody's either an
angel or a devil; it's a welcome level of complication.
This was one of two films of 1959 that blew holes in the production
code (the other being Some Like It Hot). Without itself being
prurient, it clearly wouldn't work without the specific details and
people's reactions to them.
And there's a small gem possibly lost on a modern audience: the judge
is played by Joseph Welch, he of the Army-McCarthy hearings and "Have
you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" fame. Since that was five
years before the film came out, I must assume that his casting was
deliberate.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.