ABSTRACT
One feature which emerges from an examination of legal film is the limited typology of lawyers who have appeared in such films. In Chapter 4 we identified a number of common characteristics that dominate portrayals of legal figures and this chapter develops this idea from a different perspective, the starting base. Traditionally the lawyer in the law film is a straight white male and this typology dominates the films of the past 50 years. Thus we find the lawyer is James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Gregory Peck in Cape Fear (1961) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Paul Newman in The Young Philadelphians (1959) and The Verdict (1982), Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent (1990), Nick Nolte in Cape Fear (1991) or Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill (1996). There are evidently a number of characteristics which appear to be missing in such portrayals; in some 750 films in which lawyers make an appearance, there have been few women, fewer ethnic minority and almost no gay lawyers. However recent years have witnessed a transition from appearing almost solely as subjects of the law, and within that principally victims, through some more token appearances to a much higher profile and sometimes positive image. The trajectories of ethnic minority, gay and women lawyers have been slightly different from each other. Ethnic minority protagonists started out solely as victims. We find them saved from the lynch mob-The Sun Shines Bright (1953) (Jeff Poindexter’s nephew) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1961) (Tom Robinson). They are, if not victims of the mob, victims of the legal process, like Tom Robinson. As part of this, a subtext often emerges of the ethnic minority being helpless without the aid of the white ‘crusader’; even recent years have seen films such as Mississippi Burning (1988) and Amistad (1997) that arguably fall into this stereotypical portrayal. This perspective, of the supremacy of the white lawyer, also appears in A Time To Kill (1996), though with a degree of refinement. It can also be seen in A Dry White Season (1989), with Marlon Brando as the radical white lawyer. Interestingly, in The Hurricane (1999), Carter employs a prominent black lawyer to fight his corner and the courtroom is shown to be as racially divided as in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
