Triay - Presumed Innocent

Ford in Presumed Innocent is a flawed anti-hero. The film deals with a great amount of guilt placed upon Ford's character, Rusty Sabich. Sabich is accused of murdering a young woman named Carolyn, with whom the audience knows he has been having an affair with. The audience does not know whether Sabich truly did murder Carolyn, and with building evidence including finding Sabich's sperm inside of her after the autopsy greatly affect the audience's ability to trust Ford as the hero, the good guy. The audience can feel the guilt that Sabich is dealing with throughout the whole picture.



The film's final scene involves the revelation that Sabich's wife was the one who murdered Carolyn. She discovered Sabich's affair and, led to insanity, murdered Carolyn. The couple must now continue to live together, with this fractured notion of trust between them. Guilt is manifested within this broken sense of threatened trust, a trust that is based upon an "I've killed before, I'll kill again" ideal. This unsettling idea of the couple sticking together brings about an immense feeling of guilt on Sabich's behalf, as if he had remained faithful to his wife, none of this would have ever happened.