The text-page that comes up at the end of this courtroom drama should have come up at the beginning. It tells us what we'd been wondering all through the trial - was this the verbatim transcript that it sounded like? Well, two hours and twelve minutes is a long time for a film with just one scene, but it is not as long as three months, which is how long the trial (incredibly) lasted. So the testimony and the lawyers' statements have been distilled down, but the essential story comes through clearly enough, and the character of this particular odd couple, millionaire dietician Dr. Hy Tarnower and his lover, girls-school headmistress Jean Harris, revealed in depth.
It is the contrast between these two that made the case so sensational, as well as controversial. The rough-hewn Tarnower was basking in the success of his popular slimming diet, and exploiting his bachelor status with a string of willing mistresses. ("Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen" could have been coined for the cynical, chuckling seducer.) By contrast, Harris was the very image of ladyship, strait-laced and genteel, setting a virtuous example to her school.
She hadn't been overly concerned about her various love-rivals, until Tarnower proposed to her - typically, with a huge, vulgar engagement ring - but then admitted that he wouldn't be able to go through with it, carefully avoiding any mention that he was actually ditching Harris for a (much) younger model. It was when she suddenly came across someone else's clothes strewn all over the bathroom that she settled on her suicide plan, which ended in the accidental murder for which she was jailed.
The casting of the three main characters - defendant, lawyer and judge - is superb. Ellen Burstyn carries total conviction as the respectable pillar of society, struggling to cope with the stresses of her midlife crisis. Martin Balsam (the detective from 'Psycho') is highly believable as her counsel, except when he is pretending to check details that would already have been front-of-mind with him. And Richard Dysart manages to be everything a judge ought to be - the man who has spent his career listening to a lot of lying villains, yet has never lost his integrity or his hope.
Absent from the story are two themes that must have been featured in the real proceedings. The drugs she was addicted to, apparently prescribed by Tarnower, presumably to keep her dependent on him. And the strange episode of a school strike, in protest at the management, which can only have meant Harris in person.
