Jugement à Nuremberg

Judgement At Nurmeberg is a 1961 film about four Nazi Judges are in trial for crimes against humanity. Well let me just start out by saying that this is a very sad, powerful film. I was expecting it to be very boring and I guess I underestimated it. The film is also very well written, so well written that actually it makes you really think. I'm happy that it won an Oscar for writing.

The best quality about the film HAS to be the acting. Judy Garland, I think should of won a Supporting Actress. This is her finest performance ever, and I'm sad she didn't win one. Maximilian Schell gives the performance of a lifetime in his role as the defense attorney for the judges. He truly deserved his Oscar because he was very powerful. Spencer Tracy also gave a quite exceptional performance as he always had. (He isn't a Two-Time Oscar Winner for nothing. As for Montgomery Clift he deserved his Oscar Nomination. I am kind of ticked off that Marlene didn't get an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. I always feel she is underrated.

As for Stanley Kramer (The Director) he had real talent and this film shows it. The 9-Time Oscar nominated Director should've of won an Oscar for Best Director for Judgement at Nuremberg. I hope his talent though will be remembered for many years to come.

My Overall Consensus is that the movie definitely succeeds due to the Extraordinary Performances and the Quite Exceptional Writing.

You Should see this Film. 10/10

Lacking the big names of what people normally think of as the "Nuremberg Trials" - the trial of Nazi leaders such as Goering, Hess and Speer - this movie focuses on the lesser known people who were tried for war crimes: the German judges whose responsibility it was to dispense "justice" in Hitler's Germany. Although the big names are missing, the movie is powerful and masterfully deals with the troubling questions around Nazism: how could normally good, decent people (represented in this movie by Ernst Janning, played by Burt Lancaster, on trial with three others) have allowed themselves to be sucked into the evil that was Hitler and National Socialism? How could the German people have turned a blind eye to what was going on and simply denied all responsibility? And the movie also considers a troubling question about the United States: if Nazism was evil enough to have warranted a war and then all the effort of the Nuremberg trials, why were the Americans suddenly so willing to "forgive and forget" with the onset of the Cold War and the threat of communism?

The implication here is that the Americans never really took the secondary trials seriously. A second-rate judge (Dan Haywood, available only because he had been defeated in an election, and played magnificently by Spencer Tracy) was appointed to head the trial, the Army was putting pressure on the prosecution to go lightly. It's an amazing fact of history that within three years of the end of World War II, the feeling was so clearly against pursuing those who had played roles in the Nazi nightmare (and, of course, it's a question that still haunts us today as Nazi war criminals from time to time turn up and the response of the public is often, "he's an old man. Why bother?")

Focussing largely on the trial itself, the movie is consistently gripping throughout, and even the diversions outside the courtroom (such as the relationship between Judge Haywood and Mrs. Bertholt -Marlene Dietrich) don't detract from the suspense, as they continue to push the question: "how can you just sit there and deny knowing anything?" Anyone with an interest in the puzzle of Nazi Germany should watch this. In the end, it raises a lot of questions and offers few answers, but that may be the legacy of Nazism. But the movie makes its point. As Judge Janning talks to Judge Haywood at the end of the movie he says almost pleadingly, "we never knew it would go so far." Haywood simply responds, "Herr Janning, it went that far the first time you convicted a man you knew was innocent." Powerful stuff.

10/10

I once read a review of this film that criticized the fact that the American chief prosecutor as played by Richard Widmark was a less sympathetic and engaging character than the defending lawyer, Herr Rolfe as portrayed by Max Schell. Schell's Oscar winning performance illuminated the "shattering truth" that the film reveals about Nazism. Extremely able and educated men were able to rationalize what they did with an irresistible logic. They loved their country and, in a time of a national crisis, found it necessary to implement certain measures. As expounded by Rolfe, it all sounds so logical and reasonable. He also cites the fact that many world leaders actually commended Hitler upon his leadership in getting Germany out of the Depression as swiftly as he did.

Widmark's character, Lawson, is understandably appalled by Herr Rolfe's defence of the indefencible and therefore he pulls no punches. He wants those responsible to be held fully responsible but he finds Germans who are ready to extenuate and rationalize. After he is told to tone down his demands for justice, Lawson acerbically retorts, "There are no Nazis in Germany. It was those damned Eskimos."

The moment that illuminates how pure reason without humanity is so dangerous is when Pohl, a right hand man for Eichman, explains how it was possible to kill millions of people in purely technical terms. His explanation as he eats his lunch is devoid of any hint of human empathy for the victims he has so blithely exterminated. His was a job that was the logical extension of a policy and he carried it out with a detached and technical logic.

The key point that the film makes is that to be logical is not always to be morally right.

I watched "Judgment at Nuremburg" on PBS the other night. I had never seen it before. I expected an empty-headed, Hollywood-style, quasi-melodrama, but I was pleasantly surprised. Even Spencer Tracy, that universally beloved actor whose appeal has always escaped me, gave an honest and heartfelt portrayal of a "simple man" who was also a deeply conflicted judge.

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.

It is so easy to dismiss this as a story of other people in another time in another land. Unfortunately, what was done then, is being done by the leaders of our country in the name of protection from terrorists, and we, the people, sit silently by and let it happen just as the German people did seven decades ago.

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.