Very poor direction

This movie came out in 1959 and Law and Order was decades later. If it seems like nothing special and like anything you see on Law and order it is more than likely because Law and Order was influenced by the film. Many courtroom movies are jumpy and it is possible that this was intentional.

loved the movie hated the score, very annoying to me. something like the galant hours and town without pity

I preferred its build up, with Stewart & co. going around town investigating & constructing their side. The courtroom allows all that to pay off.

...top 50 http://www.imdb.com/list/ls056413299/

The jazz score is not really integral to the film or the setting or the characters... Preminger just wanted to jazz things up. Many Preminger films Advise and Consent(62) Hurry Sundown(67) In Harm's Way(65) The Cardinal(63) Exodus(60) Bunny Lake Is Missing(65) and Anatomy of a Murder(59) seem endless

I love the music at the very end of the movie: a crazy high trumpet note that's like a scream.

As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a wasted minute in this movie. Everything relates to the case.

Interestingly enough, I'm just now re-watching the scene where Biegler gives Mary Pilant his theory that "I don't believe people are just good or just bad. People are many things."

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Harmonica -- They were all alive til they met you Frank.

One Upon a Time In the West -- Nice quotes

Me I loved Anatomy. I'm a big Stewart fan and this is a masterful performance by him. I also liked the ending, it reinforces the fact that Lt. Manion isn't a decent guy. We have spent the film, on the strength of Stewart, hoping to exonorate a wife beating murderer whose saving grace isn't that he was under an irresistable impulse but that the man he killed was (ultimately) found to have raped Mrs. Manion, its the "he needed killing" defense. Manion references the "unwritten law" which Beigler rebuts as a legal fiction but the movie relys upon the audience being bound to just that law.

Once again...I said (well, actually my husband said, but I agree) that this movie was no BETTER than Law and Order. Not that it was LIKE Law and Order. Obviously, it was not LIKE Law and Order and of course I agree that Law and Order was influenced by earlier courtroom movies and TV shows.

The point I was trying to make was, to me and to my husband, this is generic stuff we've seen before, and often, done way better (not just in modern day TV either) and to me was in no way as spectacular or "realistic" as we had heard, so we were both disappointed.

I think this is just a matter of different strokes. I definitely respect the opinions of the people who don't care for the movie, movies are a matter of taste. Personally I find "Anatomy of a Murder" to be a spellbinding, fascinating film with riveting performances, and to me the jazz score enhances the film tremendously. But believe me, if you don't feel the same way, that's okay with me.

"Anatomy of a Murder" is a key film, from a key period in American movies, roughly 1958-1962.

Heavy censorship was still in place. The permissive ratings code that would allow cussing, nudity, sex etc -- via the "R" and "X" ratings -- would not come in until late 1968.

Meanwhile, European films WERE allowing nudity, sex, etc and a handful of powerful American directors sought to push the envelope of what would be allowed in American films as well.

This period saw: Orson Welles "Touch of Evil" (1958), Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" (1959) and "The Apartment" (1960), and Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960.) All of these movies took on sexual issues in a forthright way and the American censor board chose to let them through.

But none of those was quite as DIRECTLY sexual as Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" of 1959. It's very title suggested that the movie would be about the human body, not only with regard to murder, but with regard to sex (rape.)

Here was a film in which words like "slut" and "sperm" and "rape" and "panties" were used most directly in an era when they weren't supposed to be used at all. Otto Preminger had fought the censors years before over the word "virgin" in "The Moon Is Blue" (1953), but "Anatomy of a Murder" took a quantum step up in this regard.

The film was also notable for its extensive semi-documentary footage of a most bleak and forboding part of America: the upper penninsula of Michigan. Many scenes were filmed on location both indoors and out; you can hear the echoes of the real rooms when the sound recording wasn't perfect. In outdoor car scenes at night, Otto eschews process shots and tries (hard to do in 1959) to provide well-lit shots of Jimmy Stewart driving his convertable down real Michegan highways.

Against a backdrop of a new kind of sexual frankness and bleak realism, "Anatomy of a Murder" offered a nicely ambiguous story -- a late Otto Preminger specialty also found in "Exodus," "Advise and Consent" and "In Harm's Way" as to: Who is bad? who is good? who is right? who is wrong? Otto wasn't one for easy answers, and "Anatomy of a Murder" doesn't offer them.

Just one year after his towering performance in "Vertigo," James Stewart here got the Oscar nomination "Vertigo" didn't get him. You can understand why: he's more like good ol' Jimmy Stewart in this one. But look again: Jimmy's playing a defense lawyer defending a brutal hothead who just might have committed this murder in cold blood, over a slutty wife who might not have been raped after all. Jimmy here fronted the idea that a good criminal defense lawyer just may not be able to CARE if his client is guilty; and Jimmy subtly plants the idea in his client's mind of "irresistable impulse."

In addition, audiences were shocked to see JIMMY STEWART talking about rape and panties in court -- but perhaps only Jimmy Stewart could take audiences to that new place in movies. Finally, per Preminger's technique, there are many single-take scenes in this movie in which Stewart must remember and deliver pages and pages of dialogue. That's Oscar-worthy. But Jimmy often was. (Chuck Heston beat him that year, for "Ben Hur." Ridiculous.)

Jimmy pits his patented good ol' boy drawl against fresh young George C. Scott as a tough prosector sent down to double-team Jimmy in court (with the feckless local DA)...watching Jimmy and George verbally duel is sweet science.
Jimmy also holds his own with simmering young method guy Ben Gazzara (as the hothead defendant), and their scenes have great generational tension. And Jimmy is downright funny trying to fend off the occasional advances of Lee Remick as Gazzara's "easy" wife (once, with Gazzara jealously watching from his jail cell window.)

As Jimmy spars with the young stars of the next generation, Preminger also comfortably surrounds Jimmy with a coupla' old pros as his legal helpers: sassy Eve Arden as his unpaid secretary and Arthur O'Connell as an alcoholic old lawyer who finds salvation with this case. Old-fashioned, but it works. The film makes a charming point: confirmed bachelor Stewart has fashioned his own family out of Eve and Arthur -- and the middle-aged single Eve may just be a wife of sorts for Jimmy, or will be.

The old of classic narrative storytelling and the new of a violent, sexual era come together memorably in "Anatomy of a Murder." "Perry Mason" was fun fantasy, and actually maybe better on court procedure, than "Anatomy of a Murder." But "Anatomy of a Murder" was a MOVIE, and a landmark one, and a sexy one, and a gripping one, and a funny one, and a fascinating one. And it lives on long after its shock value has faded.

No, jonchopwood, I'm not at all out of my mind. Neither do I prefer my movies pre-digested - some of my favorite directors are require quite a bit of thinking, such as Lynch and Welles and Hitchcock. I just didn't like this particular movie and agreed with the original poster the direction was unappealing. I added that I found the courtroom scenes to be less impressive than I had been anticipating.

That's all. My difference in opinion doesn't mean I "CAN'T THINK." Just that I disagree. I add this because I was a little stunned by the way my opinion of this movie led you to totally denounce the intelligence of my entire generation. (Not only is that rude, but it's also just wrong. For example, you may have heard of a couple of dudes in my "can't think" generation who invented a little thing called Google?)

<Are you out of your mind? This is one of the towering achievements of American cinema, featuring brilliant performances>

The same has been said about Gone with the Wind & Wizard of Oz, but there are some that still don't like those movies.

Anatomy is a good movie, but just because somebody doesn't like it, doesn't mean they're out of their mind. Different strokes for different folks. :)