Now Playing: JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
This is a powerful film. Not one I could stand to watch over and over, but perfect for a dark afternoon. It's not a depressing film, but it's certainly a heavy one. And why shouldn't it be, since it examines Nazism, its tragic effects on its victims, and the culpability, not just of those evil men who were active participants in the Third Reich, but of otherwise kind, moral, thoughtful men and women who let it happen.
Swiss-born actor Maximilian Schell and screenwriter Abby Mann won Oscars for JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, a stunning courtroom drama that portrays the Nuremberg war crimes trial of four German judges (one of whom is portrayed by Burt Lancaster) who sentenced enemies of Hitler to sterilization, concentration camps and execution. The argument presented by German defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Schell) is that they were doing their duty as patriots by following the letter of the law, and if these men are to be found guilty, shouldn't others, such as Winston Churchill and American industrialists who supported and even contributed to Hitler's early rise to power, also be considered culpable? Leading the three-jurist tribunal is Judge Dan Heywood (Spencer Tracy), a New Englander and Everyman who, like most Americans in the aftermath of the Third Reich, seeks to understand how the German people, such as the attractive widow Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), who in his experience are kind and intelligent, could have gone along with the Nazi party's atrocities. Under intense questioning by dogmatic Army prosecutor Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), witnesses include a baker's assistant (Montgomery Clift) who was ordered sterilized because of his alleged feeblemindedness and a woman (Judy Garland) accused of having sexual relations with an elderly Jewish man, who was executed for it.
JUDGMENT received ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and acting nods for Tracy, Clift and Garland. It's an extraordinary if overlong drama (running close to 190 minutes), although director Stanley Kramer nicely uses Ernest Laszlo's Oscar-nominated camera to swirl around, track across or zoom in on his cast, which adds some movement to a film whose strength is its dialogue and casting. Mann's musings on patriotism and the complications of war had previously been seen in a 90-minute live presentation on TV's PLAYHOUSE 90 (which also starred Schell and was directed by George Roy Hill), but the film's extra length allows him and Kramer to spend more time looking into the horrors of the Nazi regime and the moral questions that surround those who participated, no matter their justification. For instance, Lancaster's character is portrayed as a thoughtful, decent man whom many Germans feel shouldn't be prosecuted at all. It's too bad the PLAYHOUSE 90 telecast couldn't have been included as an extra on MGM's DVD (matter of fact, it's too bad no live telecasts--some of which have survived as kinescopes--from the Golden Age of Television are readily available for viewing), but that's a small quibble with a film that resonates like this.
You'll also easily spot a young acclaimed stage and TV actor named William Shatner playing Tracy's aide; it's a shame Shatner wasn't asked to participate in the DVD's extras, since I have never read or seen an interview with him where this film was mentioned. Imagine the thrill of a young actor stepping onto the same soundstage and trading dialogue with legends like Tracy, Garland, Clift, Lancaster...there must be some stories there. It's also to Abby Mann's credit that many of NUREMBERG's smaller roles, including Shatner's, are given extra dimension, adding an extra human element to the production.
This will certainly make my Top Ten DVDs of 2004 list. Keep checking this space to learn my picks for the Best and Worst Films of the Year, as well as the Best in DVD, probably beginning this week. How many did you see?
Posted by Marty
at 4:26 PM CST
