The sto­ry of Duke Ellington’s Anato­my of a Mur­der score

Open­ing titles were a fine art in 1950s Hol­ly­wood. Mix­ing increas­ing­ly avant-garde images with inno­v­a­tive music, the decade saw a wealth of styl­ish, influ­en­tial title sequences that pushed the bound­aries. And few bet­ter encap­su­late the changes that took place in Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma at the time than that of Otto Preminger’s court­room dra­ma, Anato­my of a Mur­der.

Yet its title sequence by Saul Bass – frag­ment­ed, stylised, ani­mat­ed and ener­getic – also high­lights the oth­er big inno­va­tion in Preminger’s film: its score. One of the first big film scores giv­en over to a ful­ly fledged jazz musi­cian, Anato­my of a Mur­der not only looks rad­i­cal but sounds it too thanks to the musi­cal edge of Duke Elling­ton and Bil­ly Stray­horn. Theirs was a musi­cal rev­e­la­tion that, 60 years on, still sounds and feels fresh.

Based on a real-life case occur­ring mere years before, the film revolves around a com­pli­cat­ed mur­der tri­al. Mav­er­ick, idio­syn­crat­ic lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stew­art) decides to take up the case for the defence of US ser­vice­man, Lt Fred­er­ick Man­ion (Ben Gaz­zara) after he has admit­ted to shoot­ing the own­er of a bar, sup­pos­ed­ly in revenge for an attack on his wife, Lau­ra (Lee Remick). Pre­minger details at length the prepa­ra­tion and fall­out of the tri­al, as the lawyer for the pros­e­cu­tion (Brooks West) brings in a big hit­ter from the city, Claude Dancer (George C Scott). But are the accused mil­i­tary man and his wife real­ly telling all about their rela­tion­ship and the events that night that led to the death of an unarmed man?

Though not­ed for an array of ground­break­ing aspects, in par­tic­u­lar its refresh­ing­ly real­is­tic por­tray­al of the legal process and its fear­less inclu­sion of a more detailed sex­u­al real­i­ty, it is Elling­ton and Strayhorn’s sound­track where the film is at its most ambi­tious. Arriv­ing a year after Miles Davis’ cel­e­brat­ed score for Louis Malle’s Ele­va­tor to the Scaf­fold, Anato­my of a Mur­der was the first major Hol­ly­wood film to fea­ture a score by an African-Amer­i­can com­pos­er, as well as being one of the ear­li­est to use jazz in such a way.

Whether in croon­ing, cool leit­mo­tifs or bom­bas­tic par­ty pieces, the score switch­es between the more typ­i­cal dynam­ic move­ments of tra­di­tion­al film scores and its own smooth style and direc­tion, thanks as well to the alto sax of John­ny Hodges, the trum­pet of Clark Ter­ry and the trom­bone of Britt Woodman.

Jazz feels in some ways an aes­thet­ic prism through which the whole film is seen. When Bass’s equal­ly mod­ern titles fill the screen, they pair with the score beau­ti­ful­ly in high­ly stylised frag­ments and sharp lines. It’s even more fit­ting that Bass’ designs feel like noth­ing less than a miss­ing edi­tion of Hen­ri Matisse’s Jazz series, only if Matisse had been put in charge of a crime scene recre­ation rather than a pure­ly expres­sion­is­tic project.

Yet the music was rad­i­cal for Elling­ton too. One of the biggest names in jazz at the time with his suc­cess­ful band, work­ing on the film marked a dra­mat­ic shift for his and Strayhorn’s com­po­si­tions. This was to be the first occa­sion of Elling­ton work­ing from oth­er people’s ideas; the free­dom of the form, which seemed so essen­tial to its work­ings, great­ly reduced by the very process of film score recording.

Nev­er­the­less, Elling­ton was will­ing to com­pro­mise. He record­ed two ver­sions of the score, with motifs from both find­ing their way into the final film thanks to music edi­tor Richard Car­ruth. A sim­i­lar process occurred for what made the final cut of the sound­track album too, put togeth­er by its pro­duc­er Irv­ing Townsend, and explain­ing the dis­crep­an­cies between the final sound­track LP and the final score. Either way, it did lit­tle to lessen the suc­cess of the film or its music. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­en Oscars includ­ing Best Pic­ture (it lost out to Ben-Hur), while the sound­track won three Gram­mys includ­ing Best Sound Track Album.

The score works on sev­er­al lev­els with­in the film, not sim­ply in the more typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood fash­ion of being placed over the nar­ra­tive. Con­sid­er­ing the world of the film – law courts, coun­try fish­ing haunts and trail­er parks – there’s a refresh­ing con­trast to using such urban-infused music, build­ing unusu­al jux­ta­po­si­tions to the peo­ple and places on dis­play. When Lau­ra turns up at Paul’s office, his sec­re­tary, Mai­da (Eve Arden), tells him, ​“She’s been through all your albums, from Dix­ie to Brubeck.”

He’s not the typ­i­cal clean-cut lawyer but an impro­vis­er, reluc­tant to be the per­son he’s expect­ed to be, and only drawn out of his usu­al life of fish­ing and jazz by this par­tic­u­lar case. The music implies that he’s aware of the social world out­side of that of his peers, vis­it­ing the same bars as the spouse of the defen­dant to play and lis­ten to the music. Jazz is real­ly cod­ed as his advan­tage in the court room, his humanity.

The score, and in par­tic­u­lar its intu­itive char­ac­ter, feels exact­ly in line with its main pro­tag­o­nist. It’s almost unpre­dictable in regards to which direc­tion it’ll go, and the film goes to great pains to show Paul as actu­al­ly the musi­cian respon­si­ble for the music. It gives the char­ac­ter a mav­er­ick pow­er over the nar­ra­tive, as if he’s in touch with forces out­side of the film, to the point where it’s incon­ceiv­able that he may lose the case.

Pre­minger even films Paul play­ing along in a night club with Elling­ton him­self who makes an appear­ance with his band; the pair sat togeth­er at the piano work­ing through one of the score’s stan­dards. This unusu­al­ly self-aware moment is key in acknowl­edg­ing Ellington’s impor­tance to the film, sat jam­ming with James Stew­art at the piano. It’s one of the best hat tips to a film’s com­pos­er Hol­ly­wood pro­duced, acknowl­edg­ing that times were chang­ing and that its music final­ly need­ed to catch up with the cool cats.