Smith-Presumed Innocent

         Presumed Innocent Blog

         Carolyn Polhemus, a comer in the Kindle County D.A.'s Office, is found viciously murdered in her home. Immediately her boss, D.A. Horgan and his chief deputy, Rusty Sabich start an investigation. One of the main issues in this movie that made Rusty seem guilty to the audience a lot of the time and that is what I am here to show. The undermining scenes of Rusty’s innocence in Presumed Innocent. Presumed Innocent is based on a novel written by Scott Turow and it is about political corruption. That idea is in both Presumed Innocent and The Fugitive. In the Fugitive there is more interest in not just the corruption but also the laziness of the cops but in Presumed Innocent the actual corruption of that whole corporation is brought into play. Devlin MacGregor is the main person in The Fugitive that could demonstrate this idea of complete corruption and what anyone would do for money.

         In presumed Innocent most of the emphasis is on the court case rather than most of the movie not being action based but law based. But in every case Rusty has to question his part in what has happened. We have the flashbacks that are the same in both movies. In both movies the death of the woman is the instigator. We don’t actually see the woman in Presumed Innocent get killed but we obviously see Sabich’s connection to her. This connection is what indicated to the audience that he could very easily have a motive. There is absolutely no motive for Richard Kimble to kill his wife in The Fugitive.

         The first scene is the motivation for Rusty Sabich is read because not only does he sleep with her but then when he wont run against Horgan she switches her affections to Horgan and kind of betrays Rusty. That is a motive in itself. The questions of the way the cops handle the evidence is important in the case because it shows their disinterest in Rusty’s innocence. His hesitancy to take the case is another indication of his ambivalence toward the case. The main thing in this movie that is important is that Rusty feels guilty and that conveys itself to the audience in several different ways.

         The second scene is where there is a point in the movie where Rusty tells his wife that ‘I told Sandy Stern I didn’t do it’ and everyone knows that you should never say those words because it causes people to think the opposite. You never admit or express that to your defense attorney and he did so that again also undermines his credibility as an innocent. “Pakula wanted to make the passion angle secondary to a story about the justice system and the irony of a man of presumably high morality being victimized by the very system he has served so diligently for so many years” (Pfeiffer 184). This is very important during the movie because it directed us to the right information for the plot to run smoothly.

         The third scene is the bookend in the movie that is important as well at the end when he gives a rationalization. Is it valid? Has he in fact become corrupted in the way that all the other people in terms of the case are. The bookends start off the movie with the same or similar shot that it ends with. This final scene is where the picture comes into play. In this picture the dominant is Sabich’s wife Barbara because of the light on her face. I think that her being the dominant is an indicator of the final revealing of who the murderer is. The lighting key is dim because of the seriousness of the situation in court and the the depth is important too. The fact that Rusty is in the foreground undermines his innocence but his wife is in the background and we can see her entire shoulders which means she is more center. These details undermine Rusty’s innocence but also exonerate him because his wife is the murderer.