The Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Tango, jazz, and Hollywood musicals have emerged to distract the working class from its daily suffering. By late 1950s, the suffering had receded; the better-off working class had matured for instruction; the Production Code had begun to fade. "The Anatomy of a Murder" is a glimpse into the cinema that was to follow, with compromised ideals and inconclusive endings.

Whenever censorship is imposed on art, someone in the audience gains from the ingenuity of the artist outwitting the censor. Others suffer from having missed the innuendo, or the artwork of the artists who are bad at innuendos. The "speaking-of-horses" dialogue in the "Big Sleep" (1946) hardly could have been improved if the Code had been absent. With the code, sometimes even a villain had to speak like a gentleman, which amplified his evil.

Once the Code retreated, poetry retired---for a while. One could go to more places, but would meet fewer people. Films clustered into ratings with the advent of the rating system, as homes clustered into suburban communities with the advent of the motorcar. The dream disintegrated as did American cities---inexplicably, unintentionally, temporarily. "The Anatomy a Murder" is explicit in its treatment of a certain undergarment of a lady, but is delicate at hinting the cultural changes of the forthcoming decades.