Jodie Foster in the Pivotal Bar Scene from the Courtroom Drama The Accused (1988)

Jodie Foster stars as Sarah Tobias in “The Accused” (1988), the courtroom drama directed by Jonathan Kaplan that won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Kelly McGillis plays Kathryn Murphy, the prosecutor who takes on Sarah’s case after a brutal attack in a working class bar called The Mill. This clip is the film’s central flashback, shown late in the story through a witness’s testimony. Sarah dances and flirts in the back room, then is pinned on a pinball machine and assaulted by several men while a crowd of regulars cheers and nobody steps in to help. The sequence is deliberately harrowing and is the reason the film is still discussed today. Foster appears partly nude during the attack and is then seen in the aftermath, shaken and alone. The rest of the film follows Kathryn’s decision to prosecute the bystanders who encouraged the crime, arguing that cheering it on made them responsible too. A landmark of eighties cinema that changed public conversation about victims, consent and how they are treated in court.

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