All Rise! Action!

By RICHARD CORLISS

For any lover of a novel turned into a movie, the book is always better. Turning the pages, the reader creates an ideal film version, with the perfect stars, shots and atmosphere. So when Alan J. Pakula set out to film Presumed Innocent, he knew he had to please not only this summer's moviegoers -- the film premieres July 27 -- but also the best seller's legions of fans.

Hollywood could not have cast a more suitable director. Serious and sensitive, with a trial lawyer's appetite for the telling detail, Pakula had brought two "unfilmable" books, All the President's Men and Sophie's Choice, to life onscreen. For his new challenge, he and production designer George Jenkins scouted courthouses around the country. They finally chose Detroit for exterior shots, Newark for some early court scenes and, for the climactic trial, an elaborate set modeled on a Cleveland building and meticulously reproduced at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, N.Y.

Next Pakula had to give faces -- famous faces -- to Scott Turow's page people. Bonnie Bedelia plays Rusty Sabich's wife, Raul Julia his defense counsel, Brian Dennehy the prosecutor, Paul Winfield the judge, Greta Scacchi the luckless love. And as the accused, Pakula selected Harrison Ford, segueing handsomely from Star Wars and Indiana Jones hunkdom to acclaimed actor. The casting pleased Turow. "Ever since the book came out, people have been saying that I'm Rusty," he told Ford when they met. "I'm glad you're playing him. Now people will identify the character with you."

Ford happily accepted the challenge. With Pakula, he spent a week at the Wayne County (Detroit) prosecutor's office observing a murder case. He quizzed lawyers at lunch and took files back to his hotel at night. At one conference a question arose -- about the relative heights of shooter and victim -- that stumped the real lawyers. "Harrison was the only one who knew the answer," recalls chief assistant prosecutor George Ward, "because he had studied the pictures of the two persons. He really did his homework."

Was it worth the trouble? One close reader of the book is already sold. Turow's wife Annette was on the set watching a rehearsal when she burst into tears. "I knew the dialogue by heart," she says, "but suddenly it got the better of me, to hear it spoken in such a realistic setting -- and to realize that soon millions of other people would hear it too."