'Anatomy of a Murder'

This film (on DVD) was the second half of yesterday's double-feature here at bookofjoe ("The Bourne Supremacy" at the theater being the first).

Consider the cast of "Anatomy of a Murder":
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James Stewart

Lee Remick

Ben Gazzara

George C. Scott

Eve Arden
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Consider that Duke Ellington wrote the sensational score (and even appeared in the film).

Consider that the movie was shot in eight weeks in the spring of 1959.

Consider that it received seven Academy Award nominations, among them Best Picture, Best Actor (Stewart), and Best Supporting Actor (two nominations, for Arthur O'Connell and George C. Scott).

Consider that Lee Remick could easily have been nominated for Best Actress and Eve Arden for Best Supporting Actress, along with Ben Gazzara for Best Supporting Actor.

Those accolades don't begin to tell you how great this film - shot in black-and-white in a small upper Michigan peninsula town just like that where the story takes place - is.

The novel from which the movie was made is equally superb.

Author Robert Traver, a pseudonym for Judge John D. Voelker of the Michigan Supreme Court, submitted the book to three publishers who rejected it before St. Martin's Press published it in 1957.

It was an immediate smash, climbing atop the bestseller lists where it remained for 61 consecutive weeks.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

It receives the coveted, rarely-bestowed bookofjoe 4-star rating.