YMMV / Anatomy of a Murder

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The film's Grey-and-Gray Morality invites a whole lot of speculation about each character's true nature.
  • Is Paul an Amoral Attorney or simply a cynical veteran with a nuanced view of the ethics of his profession?
  • Was Laura actually raped or just trying to cover her infidelity? Is she just flirty or genuinely unfaithful? Did her injuries come from Quill or a jealous Manny? Does she love Manny or is she just trapped in a vicious cycle?
  • Did Manny kill Barney Quill in indignation at the rape of his wife or in a jealous rage? Is he physically abusive towards Laura or just a jealous hothead? Is he just paranoid or is his jealousy actually justified? Is his jealousy motivated by actual love for Laura or just a controlling nature?
  • Was Barney Quill actually the good, honest man the people of the town believed him to be, or the predatory misogynist he is in Laura's side of the story? The film itself takes a position on this, suggesting that it was possible for him to be both.
  • If Quill did rape Laura, then did Paquette know about it as Biegler suggests, or is he just an innocent witness frustrated by how he saw his boss and friend get killed and is insulted and scrutinized afterward? And if Quill did tell Paquette that he raped Laura, does Paquette deny that knowledge afterward to spare Mary's feelings, or to avoid facing legal charges for helping cover up a rape?
  • All of the above are questions the movie itself never resolves, but leaves for the audience to decide for themselves. While the main theme of the movie is that people aren't just "good" or "bad" but can be many things, it also demonstrates the difficulty of ascertaining what qualities people have at all.
• Award Snub: It scored seven Academy Award nominations (Best Picture, Jimmy Stewart for Best Actor, Arthur O'Connell and George C. Scott—in just his second film appearance—for Best Supporting Actor, plus screenplay, cinematography and editing) but left the ceremonies empty-handed. However, very conspicuously not even nominated were Otto Preminger for Best Director and Lee Remick for Best Supporting Actress (losing out to a second nomination from Imitation of Life). And of course, the Music branch, notorious at the time for being very cliquish and having old-fashioned tastes, probably never even considered an Original Score nod for Duke Ellington. In Scott's case, he was quite surprised at how hard the loss hit him, which caused him to decide not to ever let the awards have that kind of power over him again, to the point that he refused to accept his eventual win for Patton.
• Awesome Music: Duke Ellington's jazz score, which was the first significant (non-diegetic) Hollywood film score composed by an African American.
• Designated Villain: Mitch Lodwick is a villain by default since he's the prosecuting attorney and beat Paul for the position. But from what we see, he's far more honest and fair-dealing than Paul, even if he does lack Paul's legal acumen.
• Fair for Its Day: The film's treatment of rape and justifiable homicide is bound to come off as callous to a modern viewer. Everyone, including the female characters, treats the rape and subsequent revenge murder rather clinically: a serious crime, yes, but not a traumatizing, psyche-destroying event. Even Laura has a casual, almost carefree attitude in the days and weeks after. Of course that may speak against her reliability as a witness, which has its own Unfortunate Implications these days. Up until about the late 1960s, it was taken for granted that a woman's claims of being raped had to be vigorously scrutinized, with the traditional common law instruction to juries (mandatory in several jurisdictions until 1975) being, in effect, that the alleged rape victim was the least trustworthy witness. Nevertheless, the film's frank and straightforward depiction of legal proceedings dealing with rape, sexual assault, and marital instability was almost radical for its day.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The French word for "panties" that Dancer mentions but never actually says was presumably culotte, which indeed probably would've led to giggles in the courtroom too.
  • The Durfee precedent is an actual law in Michigan, or at least it was until the Michigan legislature abolished it a decade or so after the movie was made. It was a old, obscure legal standard, dating back to shortly after the Civil War. Biegler finds the precedent in the "ALR" or American Law Reports, essentially a digest of various authorities on particular topics. If you've never been to law school, you've probably never heard of them, and you'd be hard pressed to find a modern day lawyer who uses them regularly (what with the prevalence of online sources nowadays).
• He Really Can Act: Not that moviegoers had any doubt about James Stewart, but the younger actors on the film, trained in Method Acting, were impressed by how hard the old-school Hollywood actor worked to give his seemingly effortless performances.
  Ben Gazzara: [He was] totally concentrated on this character, totally immersed in it. I watched in awe. I said, "Holy shit, look at this. Actors Studio, Schmactors Studio, this guy can act."
• Values Dissonance:
  • It may be unclear to modern viewers the importance of Laura's wearing a girdle and the fact that her outfits are considered risqué in the 1950's, despite looking pretty conservative by today's standards. The sight of seeing 4 grown men trying to avoid using the word "panties" is bound to seem strange as well.
  • In a book of interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, Preminger explained that the film's depiction of American justice was this in other countries. He noted that during a screening at the Soviet Union, he explained that the ethos of American justice is "Better to let a guilty man go free than to put an innocent man in jail" but the Russians didn't understand it, noting that Laura was obviously a slut and the couple were clearly lying.
• Values Resonance: The film's firm stance against Victim-Blaming is still painfully relevant. No matter how flirty, loose and manipulative Laura is, she doesn't deserve to be raped, she didn't ask for it and it is still a major crime.

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