silver nitrate notes

Anatomy of a Murder and Sam Leavitt's Courtroom

11 jul 2017

Otto Preminger directed Anatomy of a Murder (1959) on location in Marquette, Michigan. The cinematographer was Sam Leavitt (1904-1984), whom Preminger had worked with on The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and would work with again. The film is a courtroom drama, but more than half of its 161-minute runtime is spent outside the courtroom, in the motel rooms, tavern back rooms, and small-town streets where defence attorney Paul Biegler (James Stewart) builds his case.

What Leavitt does with the Upper Peninsula locations is photograph them with unusual specificity for a 1959 studio drama. The motel where Biegler meets his client's wife is a real motel. The tavern is a real tavern. The small-town courthouse was the actual courthouse in Marquette, which the production used with the permission of the local circuit court. Leavitt lit these locations with a mix of available light and minimal supplementary instruments, preserving the small scale of the rooms.

The courtroom sequences are the film's set piece. Preminger blocked the courtroom scenes as long continuous takes, with the camera moving between the defence table, the prosecution table, the judge, and the witness box without cutting. Leavitt had to light the entire courtroom in advance and hold the lighting across the long takes. Stewart's cross-examinations of prosecution witnesses run in five and six-minute unbroken sequences. George C. Scott, as the prosecutor, reacts from across the room. The audience can read both performances in the same frame.

The film was considered sexually frank for 1959. The dialogue includes explicit references to rape, sexual arousal, and torn underwear. Preminger fought the Production Code for every one of these references and won most of the fights. The film was released without Code approval in some markets. It was a commercial hit anyway.

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sources
[1] Hirsch, Foster. Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. Knopf, 2007.
[2] Fujiwara, Chris. The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger. Faber, 2008.
[3] Traver, Robert. Anatomy of a Murder. St. Martin's, 1958.
[4] Leavitt, Sam. Interview in American Cinematographer, September 1959.