Court dramas on Screen

A courtroom drama often gives actors a great opportunity to showcase their histrionic and oratorical skills and the court has been the setting for many a nail-biting climax in movies. Vikramdeep Johal looks at a few such films in both Hollywood and Bollywood.

Impassioned pleas, tense face-offs, ruthless cross-examination, startling revelations — it’s hard to beat a courtroom scene if you want loads of drama and suspense. The law court has been the setting for many a nail-biting climax in Hollywood movies. Some film-makers have even used it as a platform to engage in polemic on ethical, legal and political issues.

Octogenarian director Sidney Lumet’s latest film Find Me Guilty is based on the true story of the longest mob trial in US criminal history. For 21 months, 20 members of the Lucchese family were together in court to hear 76 charges against them.

"I’m automatically interested whenever the authority is wrong," Lumet said while talking about the movie at the Berlin Film Festival recently. The themes of culpability and (in)justice are not unfamiliar to him. He is an acute observer of the fallibility of people in the legal profession, and how it hampers the administration of justice.

His debut film, 12 Angry Men (1957), was a thought-provoking jury-room drama in which a juror tries to convince 11 others to reconsider their conviction of a boy accused of patricide (It was remade in India as Ek Ruka Hua Faisla). In 1982, Lumet won accolades for The Verdict, which starred Paul Newman as an alcoholic lawyer who takes up a seemingly hopeless case in an effort to redeem himself (Sunny Deol reprised the role in Damini).

We owe it to another Hollywood master, Stanley Kramer, for making two of the finest courtroom dramas of all time. Inherit the Wind (1960) was based on the infamous Scopes monkey trial of 1925, when a schoolteacher was put in the dock for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. This gripping film was followed by the even better Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), a fictionalised account of the 1948 trials of Nazi officers. The defence lawyer (Maximilian Schell) argues that the officers were merely doing their duty and had no inkling of the consequences. The prosecutor (Richard Widmark) contends that the man who condones a heinous crime is as guilty as the one who commits it. Spencer Tracy plays the judge who shoulders the huge responsibility of giving a fair verdict in this historic case.

A courtroom drama often gives actors a great opportunity to showcase their histrionic and oratorical skills, and it is a treat to watch two acting heavyweights pitted against each other. There have been fascinating legal duels in Inherit the Wind (Spencer Tracy vs Fredric March), Judgement at Nuremberg (Maximilian Schell vs Richard Widmark) and The Verdict (Paul Newman against James Mason). While Tracy, Newman and Mason were nominated for Oscars in these films, Schell was the one who pocketed the coveted statuette.

Hollywood has used this genre to promote racial amity in movies like To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), which featured Gregory Peck in an Oscar-winning role as a lawyer who defends an Afro-American man accused of rape. Matthew McConaughey pleaded for murder accused Samuel L. Jackson in A Time to Kill (1996), a smash hit based on John Grisham’s bestseller, while Glenn Ford bore the "white man’s burden" for a Mexican boy in Trial (1955).

It was the other way (or colour) round in Philadelphia (1993), in which Denzel Washington fights the case of fellow lawyer Tom Hanks, an AIDS-afflicted homosexual unjustly fired by his firm. Though Hanks won an Academy Award for his riveting performance, Washington was equally impressive as the man who rises above his homophobia to safeguard another man’s rights.

A trial scene is not always an intense, no-nonsense affair. The judiciary and the Bar might not have liked it, but the comical side of court proceedings has been explored occasionally. Perhaps the most amusing courtroom scene is the one in Frank Capra’s classic Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Gary Cooper plays the title character who inherits a large amount of wealth but decides to distribute it among the needy. Outraged by the turn of events, greedy relatives try to prove in court that he is "pixilated" (out of his mind). Cooper defends himself with great charm, and is able to show that everyone, including the honourable judge, is pixilated in one way or the other.

Adam’s Rib (1949) starred real-life couple Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn as husband-and-wife lawyers who are on the opposite sides of an attempted murder case. The legal confrontation turns into a "battle of the sexes".

In the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, an old man who claims to be the real Santa Claus has to prove his identity in court. Jane Russell did a hilarious impersonation of Marilyn Monroe in court to save the latter from being convicted of theft in the popular musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The solemn court becomes a boisterous music-hall with lots of singing and dancing in Chicago (2002) as a showman lawyer (Richard Gere) defends two girls accused of murder (Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones).

When it comes to pure entertainment, Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957) takes the cake. Based on the Agatha Christie story, this witty, suspenseful drama starred Charles Laughton as a veteran attorney who takes up the defence of a murder accused. However, the shrewd man is surprisingly tricked by the latter’s wife, played by the mesmerising Marlene Dietrich, who appears as a witness for the prosecution. Laughton wins the case, but it is nothing short of a defeat for him as there has been a miscarriage of justice.

"How can any man be called guilty? We are all simply men here, one as much as the other," says Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s intriguing classic The Trial (filmed by Orson Welles in 1962). Well, the judicial system can’t be done away with, but its flaws need to be highlighted (and corrected) to make it more transparent and just. Film-makers have done their bit by showing us the best and worst sides of the "men in law".

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