Kunzig – Presumed Innocent

If, in our legal system, a person is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, then why is the accused arrested before that happens? In most cases the innocence of the accused is repeatedly undermined – it is not specific to this story.
From the point of view of Rusty's (Harrison Ford) colleagues, his innocence is first undermined when his fingerprints are found at the scene of the crime. He is called to his superior's office, and it is revealed to him by another prosecutor that the results of the fingerprint analysis he seemed to have conveniently forgotten about had come in, and that his were on a glass that was used the night Carolyn (Greta Scacchi) was killed. This proves that he was at the scene of the murder, the night of the murder.
But from our point of view, Rusty's innocence is first undermined when we realize he was having an affair with Carolyn, and then when he has his detective friend ignore the phone reports that show the exchange of calls between him and Carolyn. The fact that he was involved with her already makes him suspicious; but that he is trying to hide it makes it even worse.
From that point on, things consider to get worse for him. We see her breaking up with him, and how unwilling he is to accept it in a scene depicting the two of them in her office. He grabs her arm as she pushes by him, asking to know what he can do – she tells him to grow up. Just after this, 57 minutes in, we see him lurking in the darkness, on the street across from her apartment. The scene is so dark we can barely make out anything besides a part of the brick wall he is sort of hiding behind, and half of his face. The right half of his face his lit, and this is the dominant. The fact that his whole face is not the dominant, just half, is significant – it shows he is no longer completely himself, he has too sides, a dark one and a light one. The fact that the rest of the frame is completely dark shows he has let himself be taken over by his dark feelings. The closed form implies that this is very straight-forward; there aren't too many ways to interpret what we are seeing. Everything points to the fact that he is guilty.
These are all times that Rusty's innocence is undermined for the viewer, and in some for the other characters in the film. But there are also scenes in which his innocence is undermined for the characters in the film, but creates doubt in the mind of the viewer, who has more information – for instance when Rusty's boss testifies that Rusty requested to be placed on Carolyn's murder case, when in reality he, Rusty, and the viewer all know that to be false.

Lam: Presumed Innocent

A microcosm

                Contrary to Harrison Ford's previous films, in Presumed Innocent, he is finally given the chance to bring out a darker and more humane side in his character. Harrison Ford is often portrayed as a hero, but in this film, Harrison Ford plays Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford), a character who keeps the audience on their toes wondering if he truly committed the murder or not. Even Pfeiffer mentioned that this was like revealing Harrison Ford's dark nature, which in retrospect is similar to a reflection of actual human life in that no human is perfect and that no human does not have a dark side (Pfeiffer 185). There are several scenes that show how Rusty's presumption of innocence is undermined by the other characters. The characters who stick out the most in undermining Rusty are Lipanzer, his wife, and his boss.

                Towards the end of the film, Rusty confronts Lipanzer about the missing beer glass. On this boat scene, Lipanzer reveals that he had the missing beer glass, and during this scene, the lighting is very low key with light only showing on the two characters' faces. Additionally, the camera angle is neutral, which still makes the audience wonder about Rusty's innocence. Lipanzer undermines his innocence by admitting that Carolyn was bad news. The camera angle was neutral for Lipanzer but looking up towards Rusty. This is slanted against Rusty in that it indicates that Rusty might be above the law, and this is accented when Rusty suggests that it would have been okay to murder Carolyn because she was a bad person. Continually throughout this entire scene, we see both the scene setting, mis en scene, and dialogue play against Rusty and suggest that he is not innocent.

                If we were to contrast the above scene with the scene where Rusty confronts his wife at the kitchen table about the murder, we can still notice the camera angle pointing up towards Rusty, but this time, it is indicating his innocence despite his wife's actions to undermine his innocence, particularly by not admitting to the crime sooner to him or the proper authorities. This scene also acts as a nice microcosm to the entire film because in the end, his wife was the one who undermined not just Rusty but everyone involved in this case. Honestly, I was surprised the murderer was his own wife, and up until this point in the film, the film did an excellent job of swaying the audience back and forth between believing or disbelieving Rusty's innocence. Finally, his boss undermined Rusty's innocence the most directly of any character. His boss lied under oath in order to oppose Rusty in court. This undermining directly impacted the plot's events and showed where his loyalties really lied.