“The jury doesn't get much to do or say in Otto Preminger's film, even if Mrs. Joseph Welch is one of them, keeping a close eye on her husband's performance as the judge. The jury is really the front row of the audience for a movie that cheerfully treats a trial for murder less as a search after truth than a game or a play which will be decided by skill and rhetoric.
“Nearly everyone in the film is living out an act, and Preminger never rebukes this behavior. He sees it as essentially human, just as doubt and skepticism are the most proper safeguards for intelligence. We never quite know how or why Lt. Manion killed Barney Quill, or whether Quill raped or merely seduced Manion's wife or was seduced by her. Along with the defense attorney, we have to make up our own minds--justice is only a decision; the truth stays open, veiled in contradiction, uncertainty and ‘irresistible impulse.'
“James Stewart is with us again, kidding his own act of country lawyer. George C. Scott is a dandy hotshot from Lansing. Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick make a married couple who seem determined to prey upon one another. And in smaller parts we have the unfailingly reliable Arthur O'Connell, Eve Arden and Murray Hamilton, all held up to the light of Preminger's fond disdain. Not to mention two people who claim to be real: Duke Ellington, and the attorney who once reminded Joseph McCarthy about decency.” David Thomson