Thoroughly engrossing courtroom drama, famous as much for its adult subject matter and use of "dirty" language as anything else. It has some casting faults but equally there is some memorable playing, especially in the artifice-free courtroom finale played out over several tense minutes.
Let's deal with the subject matter and language issues. It must have come as a shock to middle and upper-class Americans at the end of Eisenhower's second term to be faced with a film which examines in some, if not gory detail, the possible rape of a, let's be generous, flighty but pretty young wife of a Korean War vet who, after the alleged act, cold-bloodedly shoots down the so-called perpetrator out of revenge, jealousy or was it temporary madness. No stranger to controversy, Otto Preminger pushes the envelope all the way home here, making an epochal film on the cusp of the permissive 60's, dragging America into the modern world. Hitchcock, another well-known agent-provocateur perhaps following the lead here, would take it further next year by showing Janet Leigh in her bra, taking part in a clandestine affair. As for the use of everyday vernacular in employing strong terminology for the time, with words like bitch, sperm, rape and of course panties, while they're obviously inserted for shock value, they nevertheless ground the film in realism even if the last of them is probably over-used.
Some of the characterisations, I felt, worked, some didn't. James Stewart sees it through gamely but I sense a mis-casting and why he has to be saddled with a clichéd drunken Dr Watson-type as his assistant, I don't know. Better are the performances of a young George C Scott and Lee Remick as the slimy prosecutor and floozy housewife respectively, their climactic exchanges being absolutely electric, while there's a performance of great subtlety and nuance by Joseph N Welch as the fair-minded judge.
So did the trailer park trash-couple get away with it? Preminger leaves that open and bravely eschews the use of flashback to give us no easy answers. The film's at its best in the court scenes, less so in its depiction of small-town Americana but I was certainly gripped by the last 45 minutes in particular and will give it more than the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
Let's deal with the subject matter and language issues. It must have come as a shock to middle and upper-class Americans at the end of Eisenhower's second term to be faced with a film which examines in some, if not gory detail, the possible rape of a, let's be generous, flighty but pretty young wife of a Korean War vet who, after the alleged act, cold-bloodedly shoots down the so-called perpetrator out of revenge, jealousy or was it temporary madness. No stranger to controversy, Otto Preminger pushes the envelope all the way home here, making an epochal film on the cusp of the permissive 60's, dragging America into the modern world. Hitchcock, another well-known agent-provocateur perhaps following the lead here, would take it further next year by showing Janet Leigh in her bra, taking part in a clandestine affair. As for the use of everyday vernacular in employing strong terminology for the time, with words like bitch, sperm, rape and of course panties, while they're obviously inserted for shock value, they nevertheless ground the film in realism even if the last of them is probably over-used.
Some of the characterisations, I felt, worked, some didn't. James Stewart sees it through gamely but I sense a mis-casting and why he has to be saddled with a clichéd drunken Dr Watson-type as his assistant, I don't know. Better are the performances of a young George C Scott and Lee Remick as the slimy prosecutor and floozy housewife respectively, their climactic exchanges being absolutely electric, while there's a performance of great subtlety and nuance by Joseph N Welch as the fair-minded judge.
So did the trailer park trash-couple get away with it? Preminger leaves that open and bravely eschews the use of flashback to give us no easy answers. The film's at its best in the court scenes, less so in its depiction of small-town Americana but I was certainly gripped by the last 45 minutes in particular and will give it more than the benefit of the doubt in that regard.