The first major motion picture to address the holocaust, 1961's JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG is a powerful, riveting history lesson that still packs an emotional wallop.
Landing in theaters just 14 years after the trials depicted, the wounds of WWII and the horrors of the concentration camps were still raw.
A masterclass of fine filmmakers and actors came together to reenact the trials of the German judges who followed Hitler's laws and helped send millions to their death.
But like all great films, it's not quite as cut and dry as that. Maximilian Schell won a Best Actor Oscar as German lawyer Hans Rolfe, tasked with asking the most difficult questions.
If Hitler's laws, as despicable as they were, were German law, when is the role of the judge to enforce the law and where does that line become blurry?
I was shocked in scenes within the trial in which actual footage of the concentration camps shown in Nuremberg are featured on screen. The horrors filmed by the Allied Forces are more powerful than the goriest of CGI or special effects. They are real, making them some of the most gut wrenching things I've ever seen. Like the judges in the American tribunal overseeing the trial, it was impossible for me to weigh anything evenly after witnessing the absolute gutless, heartless tragedies inflicted upon children, women and men for no reason beyond their heritage.
Spencer Tracy (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) stars as Chief Judge Dan Haywood, a judge from a small American city hand picked (but not the first choice) to oversee the post war tribunal.
The political and global ramifications of the trial are monumental. The world is watching and politicians are dancing a fine line between justice and diplomacy. Some things never change.
Richard Widmark (Against All Odds, Coma, Twilight's Last Gleaming) is excellent as Colonel Lawson, the prosecuting attorney for the United States. Widmark played many military men during his film career and you can see why. He's got both power and passion taking the Nazis to trial on a world stage.
Burt Lancaster is Dr. Ernst Janning, a respected professor and policymaker whose past work seems the polar opposite of a Hitler acolyte. Lancaster (Airport, The Train) doesn't speak a word in the trial for the first 2 hours and 15 minutes of the film, but when he does, it's a powerful turning point.
A parade of great actors play their roles well, many taking little or no salary because of their convictions toward the importance of the film in 1961.
Judy Garland returned to the screen for the first time in the seven years since "A Star Is Born" as a young woman who suffered by a judgement that put her under the knives of concentration camp doctors.
Montgomery Clift (Giant) is powerful as a key witness berated by Rolfe on the witness stand. The legendary Marlene Dietrich stars as the widow of a Nazi Commanding Office executed during the war. Her scenes with Tracy are powerful, as his personal feelings for the widow clash with the bottomless evil of the Nazi regime for which her husband proudly served.
In reality, Dietrich had been an outspoken critic of Hitler in her homeland since he first arrived on scene. She said this was one of her most difficult roles as the woman is so opposite of her personal stance.
A very young William Shatner (29 at the time of filming) is very good as Haywood's appointment military assistant for the trial. It's great to see him commanding the screen in a supporting role and holding his own against the likes of Tracy and Lancaster.
The film is a consolidation of several trials and the names of the characters have been changed within the superb screenplay by Abby Mann, who based the film on his highly regarded TV movie version of the story. Mann had a hand in some of the best Television dramas of the sixties and seventies.
Old school Directors don't get more legendary than Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) and he delivers one of his best dramas, pulling us through the three hour running time effortlessly.
If there are two parts of the film that maybe haven't held up quite as well over the decades, they would be the music score by Ernest Gold (Exodus) and some of the photography by Ernest Laszlo. Laszlo did fantastic work on some of his later films like "Airport", "Logan's Run" and certainly "Fantastic Voyage", so maybe some of the soap opera like fast zoom ins on characters were a hiccup of the moment.
Very minor quibbles with a superb film.
Spencer Tracy's final, 11 minute speech to the courtroom was filmed in one take with multiple cameras. It's a stunning sequence and Tracy carries it on his shoulders brilliantly.
This should be mandatory viewing as a double bill with Spielberg's "Schindler's List" for any holocaust deniers. Sadly these days, both films should probably be viewed by all of us once a decade, so we don't lose sight of the madness of war. The desperation of the Germans depicted here for how they let their choices get beyond them is palpable, as are the heart stopping horrors inflicted on the Jewish population and anyone that tried to support them.
Real footage of a young child, racked by sobs during liberation by Allied forces, at a camp in which their siblings and parents were exterminated, is an image that will be hard for me to shake.
As it should be.
"This trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget."
JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG earns an A+, and has been voted as one of the Top Five Trial films of all time by every major source.
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