Transcription
Foreign. [Music]
So, 1961's Judgment of Nuremberg is a bit of a difficult film to recommend and review in terms of sheer entertainment value, as its subject matter is about as dire as it gets, focusing mostly on the trial of four German judges who were accused of standing by and allowing the Nazis to commit heinous war crimes. This trial, taking place symbolically in the German city of Nuremberg, where the Nazis famously, or infamously, held huge rallies.
Now, this isn't one of the easiest films to sit through, but it's bolstered by one of the greatest casts ever assembled. And of all Hollywood eyes, to more than a small extent, it's absolutely essential viewing, both as a glimpse at a dark time in human history and a time in movies when seven or eight of its greater stars would work for practically nothing to tell an important story. Let's take a look.
The prosecution is calling them to account for murder, brutalities, torture, atrocities, responsibility for the most malignant, the most calculated, the most devastating crimes in the history of all mankind. Uh, so this video on this review really discusses the movie, Judge Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer and released in December of 1961. And I make that clear because considerable dramatic license was taken here in adapting the actual historical events, uh, for example, um, I think four German judges are tried here, an amalgamation for the movie of the 16 defendants of the 1947 judges' trial. Names are changed throughout, and I'm sure at one point, a character mentions gassing at the prison camp in Dachau, which actually took place at Auschwitz, but Auschwitz wasn't really accessible to the West until the '70s. Um, anyway, the part I'm trying to make is that I'm not reviewing history here, just the movie.
But with that being said, um, what a movie this is. Crazy. It's hard going, though. It's a three-hour long courtroom drama that presents just a small part of what was one of the biggest trials in history. Uh, after the US, the British, the Russian, and the French prosecutors, um, it's been a year trialing Germany for its invasion of Europe and all the war crimes. Uh, this was followed by subsequent Nuremberg trials focusing more on the atrocities of the Holocaust itself. And before we get into things, this film was one of the first, if not the first, Hollywood films to show actual footage of concentration camps and the horrors that lay behind the gates.
We'll come back to this in a few minutes, but there's a near unwatchable scene in this 1960s black and white courtroom drama that, despite all the demented horror that I've watched over the years, uh, still gives me chills. So, I'm one of Spencer Tracy's final movies. Um, he plays Chief Judge Dan Harewood. Uh, he's chosen to preside over this trial as Richard Widmark's Colonel Ted Lawson attempts to prosecute the judges for war crimes. And Maximilian Schell, uh, plays Hans Rolf and attempts to defend not the real innocence of these men, but the implication of finding men guilty of just following orders.
The central theme of the film, uh, being, if these men are guilty, then isn't all of Germany, or certainly the majority who knew what was really going on, guilty also? And that's the question that hangs all the proceedings, really. Is we, the audience, know with the luxury of hindsight and history, uh, the unimaginable crimes were in fact committed, but the circumstances surrounding this, um, maybe never as black and white as it may initially appear.
So, the film is kind of split into the courtroom sequence, uh, which is pretty much one of the greatest courtroom movies ever made, um, and the parts of the film where Judge Harewood explores, uh, German culture and his attempts to understand what life was like under the Nazi regime. And it does highlight how, across the spectrum of German culture, many were aware of the atrocities and some weren't. Some didn't care. Some just followed orders, etc.
"I wouldn't know nothing about that. Very few German state. And if we did, no, what could we do?" Mrs. Harewood said. "You didn't know." Outside of the courtroom, Tracy's character spends time with Marlene Dietrich's Madame Birdhold, whose husband is an officer accused of war crimes. "You know what happened to my husband, don't you?" "Yes." "What did you know of the crimes?" "They cited him before he was placed on trial with the other military leaders. It was part of the revenge the victors always take on the vanquished."
I've already mentioned Widmark, Schell, Spencer Tracy, Marlene Dietrich, which is already in Mount Rushmore of acting talent. But Judgment in Nuremberg has one of cinema's greatest casts. We also have Burt Lancaster as one of the judges on trial, um, an almost unrecognizable, shell-shocked Montgomery Clift as a Nazi victim who was sterilized as part of their eugenics experiment. Judy Garland makes a return to the big screen after about a nine-year hiatus to play Irene Hoffman, a woman persecuted for having relations with a Jew. We also have a pre-Captain Kirk William Shatner as a military aid. And now, when I suppose you're asking your audience to sit through an uncomfortable subject, the more star power you can dazzle them with, the better.
So, Judgment in Nuremberg was written by Abby Mann, was essentially a remake of his 1958 Playhouse 90 miniseries, with Maximilian Schell reprising his role from that and being rightly rewarded with the Best Actor Oscar for his film-stealing performance. So, the film was directed by Stanley Kramer, um, an absolute pro directing an all-star cast. His direction here, like in many of his films, involves basically getting out of the way and letting the characters and the story do the talking.
Yeah, why would you watch, re-watch a three-hour courtroom drama about Nazi war crimes? And I'll, I'll throw it out there in this kind of list format. So, Spencer Tracy in the twilight of his career and his life, doing what he does best. His 10-minute closing monologue here is hair-raising stuff. But this trial has shown that under a national press, ordinary, even able and extraordinary men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No.
So, Maximilian Schell's defense attorney is a force of nature performance here. Him going up against Richard Widmark is one of the film's big draws. Judy Garland, she returns to acting here after her last role, which was A Star Is Born in 1954, and despite a personal life kind of beset by her gambling debt and drink and drug addiction, turns in an Oscar-nominated performance. I also love the sight of a still bombastic Nuremberg as Tracy and Dietrich walk the streets, a stark reminder how fresh the film's events were in the early '60s. Then you've got Burt Lancaster, staying silent for about 40 minutes of the movie before getting it in a performance where he effortlessly mixes pride, duty, and a painful remorse.
"Well, villages in Germany have a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children being carried off to their extermination. When they cried out in the night to us, what was death? Dumb, blind." And then we've got that five-minute concentration camp evidence scene. It's some mind-boggling in its documentation of horrific mass murder that several cast and crew members on set that day, um, either couldn't watch or just walked off set. I could only imagine how it went down during its original theatrical release.
Now, I want to kind of end with a quick shout out to the two-episode TV special from 2000 that starred Alec Baldwin and featured a huge performance from Brian Cox as Reich Marshal Hermann Göring. So, Judgment in Nuremberg, it's part acting masterclass, part historical cautionary tale, and sincerely one of the best films of the '60s. Go check it out. It is easy to condemn the German that allowed Hitler to rise to power, but at the same time, comfortably ignore the basic flow of characters that made the Russian sign pacts with him. Winston Churchill plays him. American desperate's profit by him.