Pazza - Nuts (Martin Ritt 1987) [ITA]

In New York, the public defender Aaron Levinsky witnesses the high-class call girl Claudia Draper beating her attorney while waiting for his hearing in the courtroom. Judge Stanley Murdoch assigns him to defend Claudia and soon he learns that she killed her client Allen Green in self-defense. However, her mother Rose Kirk and her wealthy stepfather Arthur Kirk want her declared mentally incompetent to go on trial. Dr. Herbert A. Morrison prepares a medical report stating that she is mentally unstable to support the trial, but Claudia wants to prove that she is sane; otherwise she would spend the rest of her life in a mental institution. Along the hearing, the District Attorney Francis MacMillan and Levinsky question the defendant, her mother, her stepfather and Dr. Morring and the painful truth about Claudia's childhood is disclosed.