Classic of the Week: Judgment at Nuremberg
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is an extremely powerful epic, from the director of intense socially conscious dramas of the 50s and 60s, Stanley Kramer. Epic in length, that is, because the scope of the film is very personal, with an intimate look at German citizens in 1948 Nuremberg, during the trials of judges under the Nazi regime.
The film is a Hollywood film, of course, so it is a largely American cast, but there are some international actors (Marlene Dietrich and Maximilian Schell) who don’t have to fake an accent. But the Americans playing Germans adopt believable accents, and give some excellent performances (Burt Lanchaster, Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland being the leading actors playing Germans). Spencer Tracy heads the cast as the American Judge Haywood with the job no one wanted: to judge a trial of Nazi judges who dealt sentences during Hitler’s regime. Also, be on the lookout for a very young William Shatner, playing an American soldier stationed in Nuremberg.
Kramer strives for accuracy with the details of the trial (including an interesting technique involving the use of the two languages spoken during the trial—it begins with German being spoken and translated, as it was during the actual trial, and then switches to accented English for timing reasons and the comfort of American viewers). The trial raises questions of responsibility for the deaths during the Holocaust, and how much the German people knew about what happened at the concentration camps. Tracy’s character leads us through the process of deciphering how to best give justice in the wake of tragedy and atrocity. He weighs the arguments of both parties—one led by the prosecutor (Richard Widmark), an overzealous Colonel determined to hold every German accountable, and the opposing argument of defense lawyer Hans Rolfe (Schell), representing one particularly interesting defendant, Ernst Janning (Lanchaster). Dietrich plays the widow of a German high official, representing the German citizens who were in some denial about how much they knew during the regime, and were trying to return to a normal existence after the war.
This may sound like a self-righteous post-war American film, triumphing how the U.S. brought justice to German officials for what they had done by delving through their denial and refusal to take responsibility, but the film actually presents all sides incredibly fairly, giving credit to many different points of view. There are many complex questions raised throughout the trial and the film; nothing is shied away from. Personally, I was impressed by such an all-encompassing scope given to a very problematic subject. A recent article on The Museum of the Moving Image website (http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/rethinking-stanley-kramer-20100825) discusses how Kramer has apparently been under-appreciated by critics, of the past and present, because of his lack of visionary style and his self-congratulatory exploration of social issues. Watching this film, however, it seems to me that Kramer was a standout Hollywood director of the 50s and early 60s for his unflinching examinations of difficult and unusual subjects. Perhaps because he was working when cinema was beginning to be explored as a visual art—the time of French New Wave directors and then New Hollywood—his lack of artistry deemed him less important than others. But his filmmaking was focused on the human experience; his interest was in people and how they dealt with some of the biggest problems humans can face. The focus on characters in Judgment at Nuremberg (a dramatization of a true event) is what makes it so realistic and effective in exploring the difficult subject. After all, to understand history and make sense of war, one must examine the people who created and experienced it.
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