Fictionalized depiction of the 1947 Judges' Trial, the third of 12 trials of Nazi war criminals conducted by the American occupying forces in Nuremberg, Germany, in which former judges of Na... Read allFictionalized depiction of the 1947 Judges' Trial, the third of 12 trials of Nazi war criminals conducted by the American occupying forces in Nuremberg, Germany, in which former judges of Nazi Germany were tried for their actions.Fictionalized depiction of the 1947 Judges' Trial, the third of 12 trials of Nazi war criminals conducted by the American occupying forces in Nuremberg, Germany, in which former judges of Nazi Germany were tried for their actions.
- Won 2 Oscars
- 16 wins & 26 nominations total
Summary
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What I liked most about this movie was that it didn't pull any punches, in the manner of other "controversial" films of its time. The defense attorney, superbly played by Maximilian Schell, weaves a simple, but undeniable web of logic:
- Sterilization of "undesirables," one of the charges against the Nazi war criminals, was at one time condoned by the U.S. courts, and encouraged by none other than Oliver Wendell Holmes. - Numerous leading industrialists in the U.S. contributed to the development of the Nazi war machine. - Encouragement was given to Hitler's expansionism by both Russia and England. - Churchill is quoted as having admired Hitler. - The Vatican actively collaborated with the Nazis.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it must have taken major cojones to present that kind of message to American filmgoers in 1961. Would a film of that candor have a chance of being made today?
I tend to doubt it.
One further note. The film describes how the Nazis went about stripping the German judiciary of judges who were known for their objectivity, and replacing them with judges who were appointed based solely on their party loyalties.
The mind boggles at the implications and yes, the prescience of this well-written, well-played masterpiece.
As for the trial itself, the defense argument was along these lines: they were judges (and therefore interpreters), not makers of law. They didn't know about the atrocities in the concentration camps. At least one of them saved or helped many by staying in their roles and doing the best they could under the heavy hand of the Third Reich. They were patriots, saw improvement in the country when Hitler took power, but did not know how far he would go. If you were going to convict these judges, you would have to convict many more Germans (and where would it stop?). The Americans themselves practiced Eugenics and killed thousands and thousands of innocents at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The one small weakness I found was that the defense never makes the simple argument that these judges were forced to do what they did, just as countless others in Germany were, and would have been imprisoned or killed themselves had they not complied. Anyone who's lived under a totalitarian regime may understand, or at least empathize.
I'm not saying I bought into these arguments or that one should be an apologist to Nazis, but the fact that the film presented such a strong defense was thought provoking. How fantastic is it that Spencer Tracy plays his character the way he does – simply pursuing the facts, and in a quiet, thoughtful way. It's the best of humanity. How heartbreaking is Burt Lancaster's character, admitting they knew, admitting their guilt, knowing that what happened was horrible and that they were wrong, and yet seeking Tracy's understanding in that scene in the jail cell at the end – intellectual to intellectual - and being rebuked. Even a single life taken unjustly was wrong. Had the Axis won the war, I don't know which Americans would have been on trial for war crimes for the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, or for dropping the atomic bombs, but the film makes one think, even for a war when things were seemingly as black and white as they could ever be. The particulars of this trial were fictionalized, but it's representative of what really occurred, and it transports you into events 70 years ago which seem so unreal today – and yet are so vitally important to understand, and remember.
We need to watch films like this over and over to remind us of what is important and what we, as civilized humans, can be reduced to out of fear.
This is another great film by the fantastic Abby Mann, who died last month. He won an Oscar for his screenplay, and it was well deserved.
Maximilian Schell was simply fantastic, as was Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, and Judy Garland. Director Stanley Kramer brought out the best in these actors, and others like Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, William Shatner, and Werner Klemperer.
Don't look upon it as three hours of cinema, but as a class in humanity as only Abby Mann could write.
I had to check the history to be sure, but though the bare bones of the time, place, and setting are accurate, all the characters and details are entirely fictional. I think maybe this was the correct choice, because it could allow the script to concentrate entirely on two major themes in its 3-hour run time: first and foremost, the courtroom drama, and second, a look into German postwar society when most were desperate to forget and try to get back to normal living. The side plot is kind of disposable -- some of those scenes drag -- but the courtroom scenes that are the spine of the movie are intense, claustrophobic, and utterly absorbing. Because of the imbalance of the two parts of the story, I rate this as "only" 9/10, but my bottom-line message is simply to see it, any way you can. There is lots here that resonates with what is happening now all around us.
The cast is flat-out astonishing: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift. None of these giants are still with us, but if you want to see what the classic Hollywood stars were capable of, this is just about the best place to go. (Schell won the Best Actor Oscar for this, which is hard to argue with once you see him work.) Each one of these multiple leads has at least one powerhouse scene -- always in the courtroom, where all of the true interest of the film takes place -- that is guaranteed to stick in your mind. Tracy and Widmark were in lots and lots of movies, and they tended to play every role in much the same way: Tracy played the aw-shucks average guy you could imagine as a next-door neighbor, Widmark always seemed to have that flat delivery with an edge of menace -- but here they stretch themselves. Widmark's narration of the horrors revealed in the concentration camps (which in the setting of the film were uncovered just two years before) accompanied by hard-to-watch film records is impressively spare and restrained, and Tracy as the leading tribunal judge gives a summation speech that has real weight.
Even among all these leads, however, Burt Lancaster stands out. Playing a respected and even renowned German judge who inexplicably stepped into the dark side, late in the film he delivers a long, uninterrupted testimony that is electrifying. Up till that point he had been only a looming Presence lurking at the edge of the proceedings, but he is the key defendant everyone mentions repeatedly. When will he speak? What will he say? The dramatic tension pays off handsomely. Lancaster was an amazingly physical kind of actor, and by that I don't mean just physique or action-hero roles. But the camera is drawn to him in a way that is hard to explain: he can get your attention just by standing up from a chair. I think much of it is due to a kind of stillness of posture, an utter spareness of movement. I can't think of a single modern actor like that.
It's fun to note that one of the supporting actors in this stellar cast who IS still with us is William Shatner. As the military aide to Judge Haywood (Tracy), he's there from beginning to end, and he does very nicely. Several years later, he'd move on to become Captain Kirk.
Maybe understandably for the time, all the speaking roles for the "German" characters, except for Maximilian Schell and Marlene Dietrich, were played by Americans with fake mild accents. Today that wouldn't work . I'm visualizing a re-mounting of this piece with a true international cast, but I'm not sure anyone wants to revisit the Nazi era in quite so unsparing a way.
Did you know
- TriviaSpencer Tracy's eleven-minute closing speech was filmed in one take using multiple cameras shooting simultaneously.
- GoofsAt the end of the movie a graphic states that 99 people were tried and sentenced at Nuremberg and that by the date of the movie (1961) none remained in prison. Some critics have pointed out that Nuremberg defendants Rudolf Hess and others were still imprisoned in Spandau. However, Hess and the other major defendants were tried by the International Military Tribunal (with judges and prosecutors from each of the four victorious Allied powers). The caption in the film states that the statistic refers only to the Nuremberg trials "held in the American sector." By 1961, all of the defendants sentenced in the American trials were indeed free; the graphic is therefore correct.
- Quotes
[last lines]
Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. You *must* believe it, *You must* believe it!
Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it "came to that" the *first time* you sentenced a man to death you *knew* to be innocent.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Marlene (1984)
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Juicio en Nuremberg
- Filming locations
- former Reichsparteitag area, Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany(After the first session Judge Haywood walks through these former Nazi Party Rally Grounds)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $3,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $12,180
- Runtime2 hours 59 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1