I didn't like the ending, or maybe just didn't get it

[deleted]

Maybe we're all forgetting about the jury. Maybe they related better to the homespun attorney that Jimmy Stewart portrayed. Maybe they felt that he was too honest a man to defend indecent people.

It's just a thought. I'm trying to figure it out just like everybody else.


"First I dream my painting and then I paint my dream."--Vincent van Gogh

Neither he, nor his wife were likable characters. I didn't stand up and cheer when he got off or anything
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Yes, I agree. Even "The Law" wasn't a hero in this movie to my way of thinking.
I guess that's why the movie begins with a cartoon-man being cut apart and put back together.

I am in the middle of reading the book on which "Anatomy of a Murder" was based. It was the 25th anniversary of the printing of the book and the publisher had the author-- who at the time of the writing was a 50 year old lawyer who, like Paul Biegler, had just lost his bid for District Attorney after a long term in the office. He said that he wrote the book because he had to finish putting his two daughters through college, he didn't have the time to establish a legal practice of his own, and he had always been unhappy about how Hollywood portrayed courtroom exchanges. Ironically, because Jimmy Stewart as Paul Biegler did a lot of "tearing up the screen," "Robert Traver's" (a pseudonym) chief complaint was that there was much more quiet, many more legalities spoken in undertones and background information that surrounded the real courtroom drama.

I watched this movie again and again just because I couldn't figure out the character of "Laura Manion." As Maida described to Paul at the beginning, Mrs. Manion was "soft, and easy to take advantage of-- which many men did," implying her not-so-innocent involvement. An uncompromising flirt, but oh-so sweet in her realistically-portrayed naivete. And then she comes on to Paul Biegler. One of the reasons I am reading the book is because I want to figure out how "Laura Manion" is portrayed by the writer. I doubt that she is as "innocent" as the movie portrays her to be. The book was written in 1958 so I had wondered what kind of constraints the Hollywood censure-system had placed on the movie.

If there is a "hero" or "herione" to be had in the movie I judge them to be McCarthy and Maida, maybe Mary Pilante.

(Everybody knows, don't they, that "Mary Pilante" was portrayed by Bing Crosby's wife, Kathryn Grant?)

If there is anything "dramatically different" in the book, I'll post it.


Flanagan

She screams 'he's my father' and the jury decides he's not guilty? If this is a true story I feel sorry for such a travesty of justice in the 1950's. Badgering, leading, calling for conclusions is the only interrogation that goes on and it's all acceptable.
Just another contrived melodrama.

The daughters final testimony goes south. The Lt. goes to jail or even the chair.

Then the lawyer discovers the dames were in cahoots, one wanted to get rid off her jealous husband, one wanted her father dead so she would get the hotel.

The rape was staged, knowing full well how the jealous husband would react.




NATIONAL SARCASM SOCIETY

Like we need your support...

[deleted]

One of the great things about this movie is that nothing that happened is clearcut. It doesn't take a stand on whether Barney Quill actually raped Mrs. Manion, how much faith Mr. Manion puts in her account of whatever happened between her and Barney, just how far Mrs. Manion's fliratiousness will take her, whether Mr. Manion really acted under irresistible impulse, whether he's innocent or guilty. As the secretary says, she doesn't know how she'd vote if she were on that jury. That's the position a jury is put in: they only know what they've heard during the trail and have to decide on that basis whether to send someone to jail (or their death) or whether they have a reasonable doubt.

Remember what Stewart says to his client early on: The jury will be sympathetic to his case if they believe his wife was raped; they just need some hook on which they can hang a not guilty verdict. The real bombshell at the end of the trial is not the introduction of the torn panties, even though they finally provide some physical evidence that substantiates Mrs. Manion's story; it's that Barney Quill was not, as everyone in town had assumed, Mary Pilant's lover, but her father, removing any motivation for her to tarnish his name other than it being the truth.

As far as the couple taking flight at the end, remember that Mrs. Manion is described as being in tears, so it wasn't necessarily a happy ending for them. There've been some hints about Mr. Manion's character to suggest he really will kick her from here to kingdom come.