Anatomy of a Murder

World Premiere of New Digital Restoration!

Michigan small-town prosecutor turned lackadaisical attorney Paul Biegler (James Stewart) defends Lieutenant Manion (Ben Gazzara), jailed for killing his wife's assailant. Biegler enters an insanity defense, and claims Manion’s wife Laura (Lee Remick) was raped by an innkeeper and that Manion had lost all memory of the event. In one of the first Hollywood films to address sex and rape in graphic terms, and one of the liveliest courtroom dramas ever made, Stewart delivers a stirring performance. Based on the novel by the Robert Traver with a musical score by composer Duke Ellington.

Focus on Otto Preminger

The legendary film director and Austrian-Jewish emigré Otto Preminger helped jumpstart Saul Bass’s career as a movie poster and title sequence designer by asking him to design the poster for his film Carmen Jones (1954). Preminger was so impressed that he asked Bass to design the movie titles as well, and the two would go on to have a longstanding professional relationship. In this mini-retrospective, the NYJFF presents three of Preminger’s masterpieces for which Bass designed titles.