A collection of wide-ranging critical essays that examine how the judicial system is represented on screen Historically, the emergence of the trial film genre coincided with the development of motion pictures. In fact, one of the very first feature-length films, Falsely Accused!, released in 1908, was a courtroom drama. Since then, this niche genre has produced such critically acclaimed films as Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Anatomy of a Murder. The popularity and success of these films can be attributed to the fundamental similarities of filmic narratives and trial proceedings. Both seek to construct a “reality” through storytelling and representation and in so doing persuade the audience or jury to believe what they see. Trial Films on Trial: Law, Justice, and Popular Culture is the first book to focus exclusively on the special significance of trial films for both film and legal studies. The contributors to this volume offer a contemporary approach to the trial film genre. Despite the fact that the medium of film is one of the most pervasive means by which many citizens receive come to know the justice system, these trial films are rarely analyzed and critiqued. The chapters cover a variety of topics, such as how and why film audiences adopt the role of the jury, the narrative and visual conventions employed by directors, and the ways mid-to-late-twentieth-century trial films offered insights into the events of that period.

Publisher Description

Investigations into law and popular culture preoccupy themselves with understanding how law and popular cultural forms work together to challenge or sustain community structures, identity and power. It is inevitable at this point in our cultural history that law and popular culture are intertwined. There are too many television shows, films, popular novels and web-based entertainment to withdraw quot;the lawquot; (whatever that is) from the domain of popular culture. This article takes as a given the intermixing of law and popular culture, embracing it as a new feature of our popular legal consciousness. I suggest that one result of this mixing -- what I call truth tales, which are fictionalized films that are nonetheless based on true stories about law -- is to enhance our critical capacity to engage the law as a hopeful and evolving web of social, civic and political codes that shape our expectations for justice in contemporary society. This article proceeds in five parts. Part I outlines a brief history of interdisciplinary legal studies, in particular law and cultural studies. Part II discusses the subfield within law and cultural studies of law and film, as a way to set the stage for a longer discussion in Parts IV and V of two truth tales, quot;Compulsionquot; and quot;Swoon.quot; Part III more specifically describes the parameters of the quot;truth talequot; as a subgenre of courtroom drama that affects a particular kind of popular legal consciousness, one that accepts as futile law's presumed search for unconditional truth and embraces instead the legal system's promise of due process as based on normative values of fairness. Parts IV and V are close readings of the two films by way of application of the interpretive methodology and conceptual framework outlined in Parts II and III.

When police officers arrive at his home to tell him that he's under "open arrest," unassuming bureaucrat Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) can't imagine what kind of crime he might have committed. He consults first his neighbor (Jeanne Moreau) about the incident, then the courts, then a pompous law advocate (Orson Welles), all to no avail. Ironically, Joseph is able to learn of his sentence -- he is to be put to death -- but the nature of the charge against him remains elusive.

Combining the practical knowledge of a renowned director with the perspective of a historian and media specialist, Christian Delage explores the conditions and consequences of using film for the purposes of justice and memory by examining archival footage from war crime trials from Nuremberg to the present.

This collection brings together contemporary work from Britain, Germany and the United States on how law and lawyers have been represented in film, particularly in the past 40 years. The collection recognises the major influence of Hollywood and the American legal system and seeks to explore the nature and significance of this dominance. A historical dimension to the portrayal of law and film. The nature and actual impact of the dominant Anglo-American portrayal is include. A European dimension is provided.