Law on Film Jonathan Hafetz

Inherit the Wind (1960) is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial," where a local teacher is prosecuted for teaching about human evolution in public school in violation of state law. The film was directed by Stanley Kramer and is based on a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. It stars Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (patterned after celebrated defense attorney Clarence Darrow), Frederic March as the prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady (patterned after famous three-ti...

The Caine Mutiny (1954) is based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk and produced by Stanley Kramer, portrays the fictitious events on board the U.S.S. Caine, a Navy destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during World War II. Lt. Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson) relieves the seemingly unstable Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, Captain of the USS Caine, of his command after Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) endangers the ship and its crew...

This episode looks at “Law Films You Won't Want to Miss,” a recent list of "the most captivating legal themed movies," published in U.S. News and World Report. Which movies are on the list? Which didn't make the cut? And what does the list tell us about “law movies”—and of great law movies? One film on the list may be something of a surprise: Miracle on 34th Street (1947) written and directed by George Seaton, from a story by Valentine Davies. In this Christmas holiday classic, the...

Eight Men Out (1988) is a dramatization of professional baseball’s infamous Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The film, which was directed by John Sayles, is based on Eliot Asinof’s 1963 book, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series. It recounts how a group of White Sox players conspired with an array of gamblers, including notorious underworld financier ...

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) is an acclaimed French drama directed by Justine Triet, from a screenplay she co-wrote with her real-life partner, Arthur Harari. The movie centers on the criminal trial of a writer (Sandra Hüeller) who is accused of killing her husband (Samuel Maleski) in a small town in the French Alps. The film operates on multiple levels. On one level, it dissects the circumstances surrounding Samuel’s death. What caused him to fall from the window of their chalet? Was he pushed? ...

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) describes the series of murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. Because tribal members retained mineral rights on their reservation, they became extraordinarily wealthy after oil was discovered on tribal land. This leads a corrupt local boss, William K. Hale (Robert De Niro), to conspire with others in the community to deprive the Osage of their wealth by murdering them. Directed by Martin Scorsese and based on the 2017 book by ...