Saul Bass's title sequence remains a marvel of jagged op-art abstraction. The film's trump card is Duke Ellington's jazz score. Voelker, a Michigan Supreme Court Justice, based the story on an actual 1952 murder at the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay. The novel's North Woods setting is so evocative that Preminger decided to shoot the movie on location in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Trial scenes were filmed in the Marquette County courthouse.
Exteriors are flavorful, but the film squanders more opportunities than it seizes.
Anatomy of a Murder never fulfills the exciting promise of its noirish opening scenes with Paul Biegler driving into town at dusk and passing wan streetlights and flickering neon aglow in the summer night air. Returning home from a fishing vacation, Biegler learns of a nearby slaying that occurred in his absence. Laura Manion confirms the allegation in a phone call to Biegler and begs the lawyer to defend her husband. Also encouraging Biegler to take the case is his best friend, an alcoholic retired attorney named Parnell McCarthy, played by Arthur O'Connell with the kind of giddy insouciance that comes from an actor knowing he's landed the supporting role of a lifetime. Biegler tells his old friend that he'll take the case only if Parnell agrees to stay off the booze and assist Biegler at the trial.