Scholars dissect ‘Anatomy’
By JOHANNA BOYLE Journal Ishpeming BureauCheck out the video in Video Exclusives!
MARQUETTE - The glitter of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart coming to town for the filming of "Anatomy of a Murder" still shines 50 years later. But a group of local and national scholars got a chance to take a deeper look at the film itself Monday at the Northern Michigan University "Anatomy of a Murder" Film Symposium.
A collection of researchers presented on topics ranging from the film's social commentary and director Otto Preminger to the legal and ethical issues raised in the film.
"He (Preminger) wanted the verdict in the film to be ambivalent, to be unclear," said Foster Hirsch, keynote speaker at the symposium and biographer of Preminger. "He didn't want it to be an open and shut case."
On his first trip to Marquette County, Hirsch spoke about Preminger's motivation for filming on location - a rarity in the 1950s - and aspects of Preminger's own temperament that appear in the film's characters.
"He came to Ishpeming with two big failures against him," Hirsch said. "With enormous self-confidence, he created a masterpiece, the masterpiece of his career.
"He loved it here. He realized he wanted every shot of the film to be made here."
Preminger went on to shoot other films on location, but especially caught the "local flavor" of the area with "Anatomy," Hirsch said.
Aspects of Preminger's own personality - particularly his temper, womanizing nature and his tendency to bully those around him - can be seen in the characters he put on screen, Hirsch said, a personality that made him likeable and somewhat odious at the same time.
"Writing the book ("Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would be King"), I was the jury trying to come to a verdict about Otto Preminger. And it's a mixed response," Hirsch told those attending the symposium. "Do I like Otto Preminger? No, I hate him. But I love him."
The director's work was crucial in how the film was received by audiences, but so was the social background into which the film was born.
"People from my generation have these very stereotypical ideas of the 1950s. We think of this 'wonderful, marvelous' time," said Dan Truckey, director of NMU's Beaumier Heritage Center and one of the symposium presenters.
Behind the post-World War II ideals of American progress, it was also an era of McCarthyism and of great social change.
"It's a much more complex time," Truckey said.
The film created quite a controversy with its use of then-taboo words like "rape," but that was what Preminger was hoping for, Hirsch said.
"He created the brouhaha because it was good for business," Hirsch said. "But he was also aware of the dangers of censorship."
The isolation of the Upper Peninsula from the rest of the country only added to the flavor of the film, Truckey said.
"There was this sense that this place was a bit out of time," Truckey said. "I think it's important to think about Marquette in that context."
Truckey argued that while on the surface, characters and situations may have appealed to the all-American image - Paul Biegler as the fishing, small town lawyer, for example - "there's also a darker, more cynical view."
The darker aspects of the film - adultery and murder - bring the darker layers of society to the surface.
"These people are put in these protagonist roles, but they're not very nice people," Truckey said.
The symposium was organized by NMU and the Anatomy of a Murder 50th Anniversary Celebration Committee.
"It was remarkably easy to find a variety of people who could talk about the different aspects of the film," said Marcus Robyns, director of the Central Upper Peninsula and NMU Archives.
Robyns said he was concerned about what he saw as a decline in awareness of John Voelker, the author of the book upon which the film is based, and hoped that the symposium would draw awareness to the collection of papers by Voelker that are available to the public through the NMU archives.
