Adrian Martin is Adjunct Associate Professor of Film Studies at Monash University, Australia. He lives in Spain, and contributes regularly to Fandor Keyframe, MUBI Notebook, De Filmkrant, Caiman and LOLA.

One afternoon, when I was 15 years old – a precocious cinephile – I saw Otto Preminger’s "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959) for the first time, on a humble, domestic, black-and-white television set. Although Preminger was already a name on the lists (compiled from the standard coffee-table guide books of the era) of filmmakers and films I had convinced myself I needed to catch up with, I had no real notion, back then, of the kinds of intense cults of cinephilic adoration, situated all over the world at diverse moments of film criticism’s history, that had been (and were still to be) inspired by his work from the 1940s through the 1960s.

But I shall never forget the emotion that I experienced that day – and on every subsequent viewing – when confronted with a particular moment about 90 minutes into this great film. It was a moment of initiation for me – initiation into the mystique or cult of cinephilia. And that is a cult intimately connected with a certain apprehension of mise en scène.

The moment in question is part of a courtroom scene in which the lawyer Biegler (James Stewart) manages to finally introduce evidence of a rape into his defense of a soldier (Ben Gazzara). A scene of dynamic theatricality: both prosecution attorney Lodwick (Brooks West) and Biegler play to the crowd (the jury) in their very different ways.

Preminger, who began his career as director in theater, likes to play out scenes in what dramaturgs refer to as steps or beats, which break up, structure, and mark out the stages of an event. Even more intricately, Preminger lays out, in a wide-angle, one-minute take, the back-and-forth of the tussle of power and persuasion between these two, clever men. First, Lodwick speaks while Biegler sits;

then the latter quickly stands up and draws level with his opponent in order to deliver a monologue before Judge Weaver (Joseph N. Welch).