Another Round (2020)

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg

Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe, and Thomas Bo Larsen

Another Round is a Danish movie about four middle-aged school teachers who decide, as a sort of mid-life-crisis experiment, to start drinking “scientifically” to see if it might somehow improve their dreary lives.

The premise of the experiment is adorable: Some Danish philosopher suggests that the human animal is operating with a blood alcohol level that is 0.05 lower than it should be. The only way to operate at peak capacity, the four friends reason, is to drink enough in the morning, and continue tippling during the day, to achieve that level of non-sobriety.

Much of the movie is what happens when they do. Their teaching becomes more animated, their ideas more creative, and their personal relationships more passionate. And this is all fun to watch, as you might imagine.

But since it’s a Danish film, and not an American film, existential reality sets in. The dénouement is still sweet and uplifting, but also (as my old friend would say) GSD.

I don’t remember having any thoughts about the production values, good or bad. I suppose that’s a good thing. I do remember thinking that the characterization of the four main characters and the performances of this ensemble cast were all excellent.

You can watch the trailer here.

Critical Reviews 

* “Another Round is the bland English title of a brilliant Danish comedy originally called Druk. That means drink, or drinking… [yet that] can’t begin to convey the wild beauty and emotional depth of this film.” (Wall Street Journal)

* “A truly wonderful movie about trying to come to grips with life, anchored by terrific performances, infectious music, and a real understanding of the humming discontentment that all adults must learn to navigate in their own ways.” (Vox)

* “Another Round is a breath of fresh air for anyone who has been starving for intelligent entertainment. It’s invigorating and completely credible, thanks to Vinterberg’s approach and the performances of his leading actors.” (Leonard Maltin)

Interesting Facts 

* Another Round has two Academy Award nominations this year: Best International Feature Film and Best Director.

* In the film, Mads Mikkelsen’s character, Martin, has two sons. He was supposed to have a son and a daughter. The daughter was to be played by director Vinterberg’s daughter Ida Maria, but she tragically died in a car accident four days into filming. The movie is dedicated to her.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Directed by John Madden

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Judi Dench, and Geoffrey Rush

As I said above, Hamnet is, a part, an imaginary account of how Shakespeare came to write Hamlet. The Book was very good. And so, after finishing it, I felt I needed more. And I knew just the thing. A movie that I’d be watching for the second time.

Shakespeare in Love is an imaginary account of how the bard dreamed up the plot of Romeo and Juliet, his best-loved play.

I don’t know if I’d call it a historical romance or a comedic period piece. It has all of those elements and a bit of action, too.

Something I most liked about it when I first saw Shakespeare in Love was the trope of including historical people in the movie that weren’t a necessary part of the plot, but added some fun for anyone that had a passing knowledge of the theater scene in Elizabethan England.

For example, without comment, the movie demonstrated the political and commercial challenges of running a theater in England at that time, the custom of using an all-male cast and pre-pubescent boys to play female parts, the fact that Shakespeare and the other great playwrights of his time routinely acted in one another’s plays to make ends meet – not to mention the above-referenced theory that Shakespeare didn’t write his own stuff. This is brilliantly depicted by having his friend, Christopher Marlowe, frequently give Shakespeare tips on plot twists and even the naming of Romeo and Juliet.

There is also a wonderful character – a young boy that hangs around the theater catching rats – who, though never named, seemed to be the childhood version of Thomas Kyd, a playwright that was active a generation after Shakespeare and whose plays were known for being dark and even macabre.

I remembered, too, how much I liked the script when I first saw the movie. The wit and beauty of the language, and the ingenious way Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard wove into the dialog so many phrases that we know from Shakespeare’s plays.

I’m happy to report that these rewards were still available to me in this second watching. In some ways, I enjoyed them even more.

One problem: I couldn’t so much enjoy the plot as I had the first time.

This second time around, I couldn’t sympathize as much with the character of Shakespeare and enjoy as much the relationship he had with the Gwyneth Paltrow character.

And that was because, having just read Hamnet, I had become a big fan of Agnes, Shakespeare’s amazing wife, who was back in Stratford, taking care of the kids, as well as making extra money on the side, while her husband, the great bard, was philandering in London!

What You Will Like About Shakespeare in Love – Even the Second Time Around

The script, as I said, is wonderful.

The acting is good, but understandably theatrical.

The scenes, cinematography, and direction are all very good.

The plot is smart and the action is compelling.

And Gwyneth Paltrow is amazing – her stage presence, her acting, and her beauty.

I’ve sometimes wondered if every beautiful actress hasn’t had a film in which, as a young woman, she was at her most stunning. Like Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show. Like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Like Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. For Gwyneth Paltrow, it could be Shakespeare in Love.

Interesting Facts

* Shakespeare in Love won the Academy Award for Best Picture. And despite being on screen for only about 8 minutes, Dame Judi Dench’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress – her only win in seven nominations.

* In the movie, Will writes Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”) for Viola. In reality, Shakespeare addressed it (and all of the first 126 sonnets) not to a woman but to a “Fair Youth.”

Critical Reviews 

* “You can’t miss with a movie that speaks the language of love with such hotblooded delight. And in iambic pentameter, too.” (Rolling Stone)

* “Gwyneth Paltrow, in her first great, fully realized starring performance, makes a heroine so breathtaking that she seems utterly plausible as the playwright’s guiding light.” (New York Times)

* “Scene after scene engages us as cheerful groundlings, tosses us jokes, toys with our expectations, then sweeps away the boundaries between film and stage, comedy and tragedy so we’re open to the power of language and the feelings behind it.” (Wall Street Journal)

Pillow Talk (1959)

Directed by Michael Gordon

Starring Rock Hudson and Doris Day

Pillow Talk was a Valentine’s Day suggestion by K. Neither of us had ever seen it. On the one hand, it’s an old-fashioned, feel-good, romantic comedy. On the other hand, it could be the most politically incorrect movie I’ve seen in my life.

The plot is theatrically contrived. Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) and Jan Morrow (Doris Day) share a party line that he’s hogging with non-stop phone conversations with his many girlfriends. She sees him as a despicable ladies’ man and tries to get the phone company to cite him for the scandalous romantic conversations she has to listen to every time she picks up her phone to make a business call.

As  you’d expect, after a series of skirmishes, she ends up falling in love with him. And after seeing what a pure and wholesome beauty she is, he eventually falls for her.

Within that conventional arc and denouement, the action violates every current code of cultural ethics, including sexism, racism, classicism, and homophobia. Date rape is depicted as a form of healthy male wooing.

Brad Allen’s apartment is much more than a bachelor pad. It’s a molestation chamber, complete with a switch that turns down the lights, turns on romantic music, auto-locks the apartment door, and opens the sofa bed. (Roger Ailes and Bill Cosby, eat your hearts out.)

If you can maintain a 1959 cultural mind frame while watching it, you may be able to enjoy it as a light-hearted romp into love and marriage. But even as a nostalgic septuagenarian, I found it difficult to suspend disbelief.

Critical Reviews 

* “A nice, old-fashioned device of the theatre, the telephone party line, serves as a quaint convenience to bring together Rock Hudson and Doris Day in what must be cheerfully acknowledged one of the most lively and up-to-date comedy-romances of the year.” (Bosley Crowther in The New York Times)

* “The premise is dubious, but an attractive cast, headed by Rock Hudson and Doris Day, give the good lines the strength to overcome this deficiency.” (Variety)

* “Pillow Talk is a melange of legs, pillows, slips, gowns and decor and is about as light as it could get without floating away, but it has a smart, glossy texture and that part of the population likely to be entranced at the sight of a well-groomed Rock Hudson being irresistible to a silver-haired Doris Day will probably enjoy it.” (Paul V. Beckley in the New York Herald Tribune)

Interesting Facts

* Pillow Talk won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and snagged several additional nominations, including Best Actress in a Leading Role (Doris Day) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Thelma Ritter).

* The movie grossed an incredible (for the time) $18,750,000, and launched Rock Hudson’s comeback after the failure of A Farewell to Arms in 1957. It still gets a high rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Martial Arts for Women

I’ve been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for about 23 years. I’ve earned a black belt and have won several regional and national contests (for my age group), and I came in third in the 2016 IBJJF World Master Championship.

Those victories were rewarding. But the best match I ever fought was about 15 years ago when a 115-pound colleague choked me out in front of a crowd of people who were gawking and laughing.

Despite what the post-modernists would have us believe, science tells us that, pound for pound, men are stronger, faster, and have more explosive power than women. That’s why I’ve always believed that martial arts that emphasize striking (Karate, Boxing, Kickboxing, Kung Fu, etc.) are not appropriate as self-defense programs for women. But there are martial arts that are designed to allow smaller and weaker opponents to defeat larger and stronger ones. Notably Judo and Jiu Jitsu.

Take a look at the following three videos. These are real (not the simulated  BS you see so often) physical fighting contests where technique allows the “weaker” sex to not just defend themselves against attack but dominate and subdue!

Delhi Crime (2019)

Directed by Richie Mehta

Starring Shefali Shah, Rajesh Tailang, and Rasika Dugal

Available on Netflix

I’ve been to India a half dozen times – for business and pleasure — and have nothing but good things to say about it. It’s huge and exciting and immensely complicated. I love its history, which is written on a thousand buildings, monuments, and temples. I love its culture, which is rich, diverse, and fascinating. And I love its people, who are also diverse, but united by a great energy, intelligence, and kindness.

Despite the crumbling infrastructure, the lack of good hygiene and sanitation, the overcrowding, and widespread and evident poverty, I have always felt welcomed and safe in India.

If one is open to it, it’s not difficult to see India as a very civilized nation. The customs and traditions, like those of the Japanese and Chinese, have always felt evolved to me – especially when compared to American culture.

Of course, there is another side to India, just as there is another side to every culture. India is also a country (and a culture) where corruption is quotidian and crime is common.

 Delhi Crime is about a gang rape that took place in Mumbai in 2012, and the efforts of an overworked, underpaid, and occasionally incompetent police force to find the culprits before public outcry turned violent.

Gang rape is apparently not all that uncommon in India, but this particular incident became an international story that outraged everyone who, like me, was shocked to hear about it, and embarrassed India’s police and politicians.

Here’s what happened:

In December of 2012, Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year-old female medical student, and a male friend, Awindra Pratap, boarded a bus after seeing a movie. The bus was empty except for five male passengers and the driver.

Soon after the couple was seated, the driver turned off the lights inside the bus, and Awindra was beaten unconscious with an iron rod. Jyoti was then dragged to the back of the bus and viciously punched, kicked, and bitten, while she was serially raped by all six men and assaulted vaginally and anally with the iron rod. The two were then stripped naked and dumped on the side of the road.

After cleaning the bus, the culprits fled into the backstreets of Delhi and other cities in India. With virtually nothing to go on, the Delhi police, headed by a female inspector, Vartika Chaturvedi, began their investigation. Within 24 hours of the attack, she and her team had used CCTV footage from the highway to locate and arrest the bus driver, Ram Singh. Based on his confession and texts sent from the victims’ stolen phones, other five were arrested in the following week.

Joyti, after undergoing five surgeries to repair her severely damaged intestines, died as she was being flown to Singapore for yet another surgery. But before she did, she gave her testimony, using hand signals to provide yes and no answers to the magistrate’s questions.

The driver, Singh, died in custody – either killed by inmates or by suicide – and the others were all convicted. Four were sentenced to death and eventually hung. The fifth, a minor, spent three years in jail.

According to reviews I read, the 9-part TV series recounts the facts of the case faithfully, although the names and some of the details were changed for dramatic purposes. One of the editing decisions the director, Richie Mehta, made was to exclude scenes of the rape itself. Another was to focus the story on Vartika Chaturvedi, the woman who led the investigation.

The actor who plays her, Shefali Shah, looks like a very ordinary middle-aged Indian woman, but she has amazing camera presence. When the camera is on her, the scenes are very strong. When she is absent, the scenes are not quite as strong.

The presentation of the story is masterfully acted, shot, and directed. The plot is tense, action-packed, and emotionally compelling. These qualities alone are good reason to watch the series. But there are other reasons, too. Delhi Crime will give you a realistic look at the physiognomy of India. If you think Slumdog Millionaire gave you a taste of that, Delhi Crime will take you much further towards reality.

The series will also give you a disturbing look at one of the contradictions of Indian culture: In a country that has had women in top governmental and corporate positions in a much greater proportion than, for example, Canada, the US, and most European countries, there exists a scarily widespread misogyny that includes what can reasonably be described as a rape culture.

Some critics have complained that the movie is too hard to watch, just as some of my friends that have traveled to India say they would never go back because of the filth and poverty. I can’t see the logic in that. Turning a blind eye to evil is in no way evidence of virtue.

More importantly, as I said above, Delhi Crime is not the full story of India. Nor is it even the dominant one. The richness and diversity of India, its cultures, its institutions, its art, architecture, culture, and people are brought to life in this series through the brilliant and thoughtful cinematography.

There are things in the seven hours that I would have cut, were I the editor, but they are minutes here and there. The work, as a whole, is an astonishing accomplishment. It will edify and enlighten you about the world’s second-largest population. I recommend it strongly.

Critical Reviews 

* “With precision and grace, Bowen, Bruce, and Richie deliver a well-balanced and refreshing new thriller that vehemently examines the true crime tragedy heard around the world.” (Rotten Tomatoes)

* “Everything in Delhi Crime is familiar-yet-different. Throw in the visceral punch of the horrible crime itself and some complicated and detailed variations on cell-signal tracking, and you get an above-average genre exercise.” (The Hollywood Reporter)

* “Detailed, tightly paced, and intense in subject matter and attitude, the dark, shadowy streets of Delhi are captured in vivid, unblinking detail; Mehta efficiently introduces a foreign land and makes it relatable, familiar, and terrifying all at once.” (Indie Wire)

Interesting Facts 

* Richie Mehta, who cowrote the script and directed the film, spent 6 years researching the facts and interviewing those involved. Filming took only 62 days.

* Mehta’s plan is for Delhi Crime to become an anthology series that will change the crimes/stories but keep the same cast going forward.

* Delhi Crime won the International Emmy Award for best drama series in 2020.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, aka Borat 2 (2020)

Directed by Jason Woliner

Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova

Available on Amazon Prime Video

I loved Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character since I first saw his amazingly original Ali G TV show back in 2000. I also loved the first Borat film – Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) – in which he played a Kazakh news anchor, and Brüno (2009), in which he played a fey Austrian fashion reporter. The Dictator (2012), a political satire in the tradition of Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971), was a send-up of Latin American Banana Republics. I didn’t think it was as good as Cohen’s previous efforts, so when I heard that Borat 2 –  Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – was going to poke fun at the Trump administration, I was afraid it would be much less funny and more meanspirited. It wasn’t.

The ongoing trope of all of Cohen’s comic work is that he inserts his comic persona into real situations where his fellow “actors” are unwitting participants who, in responding to his prompts, expose their prejudices, both petty and profoundly disturbing. He got away with that easily when he was not well known. In recent years, he has become too well known, so to make the pretense work, he’s had to dress up in various disguises, most of which involve a fat suit.

In his previous movies, there was a thin plot that moved the action forward – some challenge his character must face as an outsider in America’s many micro-cultures, such as NYC, the deep south, the military, Washington, DC, and, in this one, MAGA land.

For example:

* In the first Borat, his character sets out to make a documentary about American culture for Kazakhstan, but his plans change when he falls in love with Pamela Anderson after watching Baywatch and makes marrying her his mission.

* In Brüno, his character ventures to America to become the “biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler” after being fired from his position as a fashion reporter.

* In The Dictator, his character travels to New York to address concerns about his nuclear arsenal. Following a failed assassination attempt, he escapes and goes into hiding with the help of a local human rights activist that doesn’t know who he really is.

In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the plot is equally thin and contrived: Borat is released from the gulag where he was imprisoned at the end of the first Borat movie (for dishonoring Kazakhstan) and sent on a mission: to deliver a monkey as a gift to then-President Trump in an effort to redeem his country’s honor. Things go awry upon his arrival in the US as he learns that not only does he have a daughter, but she has eaten the President’s gift.

I know, I know, it sounds silly. But it’s very clever… and fun… and funny.

Critical Reviews 

 * “What we get instead of the familiar indictment of garden variety, casual racism is a blistering summation of what might be deemed the alternative facts era.” (Newsday)

* “The thrill of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm isn’t just that it takes on the Trump administration, or more pointedly, America under Donald Trump. The thrill is in how smoothly, how improbably, Cohen and his collaborators have engineered it all.” (Rolling Stone)

* “As shocking as it is hilarious, as ridiculous as it is insightful, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is the comedy we both need and deserve right now.” (Empire Magazine)

Interesting Facts 

* According to Amazon, “tens of millions” viewed Borat 2 globally during its first weekend. And MarketCast tracked 1.1 million social media “hits” for the film in the week leading up to and just following its release, making it second only to Hamilton in mentions in 2020.

* Kazakhstan banned the first Borat movie in 2006, but is now taking advantage of the recognition it’s enjoyed as a result of the film by using its catchphrase (“Kazakhstan. Very nice!”) in a campaign to promote tourism.

* Borat 2 was dedicated to Judith Dim Evans (1932-2020), a Holocaust survivor who appears in a segment of the film… despite her daughter’s efforts to have that segment removed. Claiming that her mother thought she was being interviewed for a serious documentary, Michelle Dim St. Pierre filed a lawsuit against Amazon. The judge found no evidence to support the allegation that Evans had been tricked, refused to issue an injunction that would have forced the producers to cut her from the film, and dismissed the case.

A Man Called Ove (2015)

Directed by Hannes Holm

Starring Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, Ida Engvoll, and Filip Berg

A Man Called Ove. It sounded familiar. Had I seen it? Did I read the book? I thought it might be that memoir I’d read several years ago… the one written by a Nordic author. What was the name of that? Something like My Life. Or My Work. Hmm. Oh, yes! It was My Struggle!

I googled My Struggle. The author was Karl Ove Knausgard. So that was the connection!

I googled A Man Called Ove. The plot, as recounted by Wikipedia, is about an older man struggling to find meaning in his life after his wife dies. “Isn’t that the theme of the TV series with Ricky Gervais?” I thought. “Oh, the hell with it. I’ll just watch it.”

Three or four minutes in, I realized that I had seen it before. But I didn’t remember the plot. I decided to continue watching until my memory kicked in. It never quite did. So I was able to watch this good film a second time, with the enjoyment of the first.

A Man Called Ove is a good and worthy film.

The acting is universally excellent, with stand-out performances by the three leading characters.

The cinematography (Goran Halberg) ranges from the banal to the bleak, which is exactly right for the story.  The costuming is correctly invisible. The pacing is perfectly languid (Fredrik Morheden). The music (Gaute Storaas) is invisibly moving. And it is funny, romantic, thoughtful, and crushing – which, I have to guess, is exactly the way the director (Hannes Holm) wanted it to be.

On one level, it’s a romance – actually, a double romance – about the seduction of Ove, first by his wife and then later, after her death, by a young and pregnant Iranian woman who becomes his neighbor.

On another level, it’s a story about human isolation and connection. It’s a drama, half comic and half, tragic, but it’s not exactly a tragicomedy, nor is it really black humor. Its humor is sweet and gentle. But the plot is hard and depressing. The tone is moody, brooding, and in search of meaning. In that sense, it has a place in a long tradition of Nordic existentialist films.

As I said, it’s a worthy film.

Critical Reviews 

* “A Man Called Ove’s winsome sincerity – and Rolf Lassgard’s affectingly flinty performance in the title role – keep it from succumbing to excess sentimentality.” (Rotten Tomatoes)

* “Holm’s well-judged adaptation of the bestseller keeps the maudlin to a minimum and plays the black comedy just right. A strong contender for feel-good film of the year.” (Empire Magazine)

* “Holm tweaks expectations with the way he presents the material, and his grip on the film’s tricky, tragicomic tone is masterful.” (Roger Ebert)

Interesting Facts 

* A Man Called Ove was Sweden’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 Academy Awards.

* An American version of the film is reportedly in the works, with Tom Hanks to star in the leading role.

Goodfellas (1990)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Starring Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci

I watched Goodfellas last night. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. I saw it first when it came out in 1990. It had left a strong impression on me. That was 30 years ago.

It’s left a similarly strong impression on me this time. I’m trying to figure out what that was.

It’s not a big or especially compelling story, the way, for example, The Godfather is. Goodfellas lacks the grandiosity and its plot is thinner. One cannot sympathize with the protagonist (Henry Hill, played wonderfully by Ray Liotta), the way one could with Michael Corleone (played equally masterfully by Al Pacino). The former is neither willed into action by fate or changed (as Michael is), but instead is carried along passively with the events, which are mostly out of his control. Nor is Goodfellas a depiction of the American underworld at large. Rather, it’s a film version of the life of Henry Hill, the real-life gangster on whom Wiseguys, the book by Nicholas Pileggi, and the movie were based.

The Godfather adhered to the core elements of the epic tragedy (hubris, anagnorisis, and peripeteia, to name three). Goodfellas is less ambitious and in some ways less important. It’s a docudrama, which is, by nature, a lesser form.

Nevertheless, it is a very good movie. Among gangster film enthusiasts and even discriminating critics, it’s often considered one of the best American movies made in its time.

I think what makes Goodfellas so good, and worth watching a second time, is that it accurately depicts the quotidian lives of its characters – the good times and the bad times – as ultimately mundane, and presents their crimes as they actually were. Not justified by some alternative morality, but mostly selfish, petty, and ruthless. It is, therefore, a useful emotional antidote to films like The Godfather, which, however good or great, romanticize the reality of crime.

Critical Reviews 

* “Cold-eyed, breathless, brilliant.” (Vincent Canby in The New York Times)

* “What Scorsese does above all else is share his enthusiasm for the material. The film has the headlong momentum of a storyteller who knows he has a good one to share.” (Roger Ebert)

* “Is it a great movie? I don’t think so. But it’s a triumphant piece of filmmaking-journalism presented with the brio of drama.” (Pauline Kael in The New Yorker)

Interesting Facts 

* Some of the dialog is brilliantly real. You feel that it must have been tape recorded from an actual conversation. Turns out, it sort of was. According to Joe Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked most, and put them into a revised script.

* Edward McDonald, who plays the prosecutor in the film that negotiates witness protection for Henry and Karen Hill, is playing himself. In real life, McDonald had this discussion with the Hills when they were considering the consequences for turning state’s evidence.

* Both of director Scorsese’s parents are in the film. His mother Catherine plays Tommy’s (Pesci’s) mother. His father Charles plays Vinnie, the prison inmate who may or may not put too many onions in the sauce.

“Are we in control of our own decisions?” 

This is a very good TED Talk about decision making by Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, that should be helpful to both consumers and marketers. (I’ve been teaching some of these techniques for years.)

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Directed by Otto Preminger

Starring James Stewart, Lee Remick, and Ben Gazzara

Anatomy of a Murder was shot in black and white – mostly indoor scenes – and directed by Otto Preminger (whom I knew virtually nothing about before seeing this, but it turned me into a fan).

The plot is simple: A small-town Michigan lawyer (James Stewart) defends and succeeds in exonerating a US Army Lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) arrested for murdering an innkeeper that raped his wife (Lee Remick). The defense is temporary insanity.

As a courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder is not particularly profound, by, say, Inherit the Wind standards. But there are some clever legal and procedural jousts between Paul Biegler, the defense attorney (played by Stewart) and the two prosecuting attorneys (played by Brooks West and a young George C. Scott). And the many brief scenes involving the judge were so amazingly good that I said to K, “This guy has to have real-life courtroom experience.” Sure enough, he did! The judge was played by Joseph N. Welch, the lawyer famous for confronting Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings. (He’s the one who said, “Have you no decency, sir?”)

Welch’s scene-stealing scenes, Jimmy Stewart’s acting, and the almost shockingly seductive beauty of  Lee Remick are enough to merit the two hours you’d have to invest in this film.

Throughout the movie, K and I were disturbed by a dozen or so smallish things that made it difficult to decide what the facts of the case really were, and even which of the characters we could believe.

Was the Lee Remick character really raped, or did she claim to be to put her husband in jail and run off with her lover? Or was the story concocted by her and her husband, the murderer? And what about the Jimmy Stewart character? Was he a legal version of Mr. Smith (in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)? And if so, why did he encourage his client to “remember” that he was temporarily insane? And if the couple were truly victims of a terrible rape, why, after Stewart won the case for them, did they leave town without paying him?

Thinking about it later, it occurred to me that the plot beneath the plot is one of moral ambiguity: A small town lawyer triumphs by guile, stealth, and trickery – and in doing so, frees a murderer.

In fact, all three of the main characters were culpable of unethical behavior.

* Lt. Manion is jealous and prone to violence and possibly abusive.

* Laura is manipulative and insincere. She admits to taking advantage of her beauty by being flirtatious.

* Biegler thinks of himself as principled, but subtly coaches Lt. Frederickson into inventing the defense of temporary insanity.

And that brings me back to Otto Preminger. A brief look at his filmography suggests that he had a preference for movies with challenging moral themes:

* The Moon Is Blue (1953), a comedy, was criticized for taking a flippant view towards sex.

* The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) focused on a heroin addict.

Critical Reviews 

* “Simply the best trial movie ever made,” (Kim Newman in Empire Online)

* “Spellbinding all the way, infused by an ambiguity about human personality and motivation that is Preminger’s trademark.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum in Chicago Reader)

* “Coolly absorbing, nonchalantly cynical.” (Jessica Winter in Time Out)

 Interesting Facts

* The opening credits are very cool.

* The movie is based on the book by Robert Traver, the pen name of Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker. The story is based on a murder case in which he was the defense attorney earlier in his career.

* This was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to challenge industry censorship guidelines (the Hays Code) and address sex and rape in graphic terms. Dialog included the first on-screen use of such words as “intercourse” and “semen.”

* Duke Ellington (who appears in the film) wrote the Grammy-winning score.