[Last Film I Watch] Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) [8/10]

Title: Judgement at Nuremberg
Year: 1961
Country: USA
Language: English, German
Genre: Drama, History
Director: Stanley Kramer
Writer: Abby Mann
based on his original story
Music: Ernest Gold
Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo
Cast:
Spencer Tracy
Maximilian Schell
Burt Lancaster
Richard Widmark
Marlene Dietrich
Judy Garland
Montgomery Clift
William Shatner
Werner Klemperer
Edward Binns
Ray Teal
Kenneth MacKenna
Virginia Christine
John Wengraf
Joseph Bernard
Alan Baxter
Torben Meyer
Martin Brandt
Olga Fabian
Otto Waldis
Rating: 8/10

Stanley Kramer’s 3-hours historical courtroom drama about the trial of four distinguished German judges after WWII in Nuremberg by an American court which is presided by Judge Dan Haywood (Tracy), the defendants are not direct participants of neither the combats nor the Holocaust, but do they hold the responsibility of condoning Hitler and the Third Reich’s atrocity without interfering with their own divine and authoritative power to forestall all the ensuing heinous horror during the WWII, or before, when Nazi’s racial persecution was striking the minority population within Germany under the patronage of law? Are they responsible for the killing of those millions of innocents during the most horrifying genocide in the human history? Based on Abby Mann’s meticulous script and a powerhouse cast.

Some of the defendants are avid advocates of such wanton injustice, but the sagest among them is Judge Ernst Janning (Lancaster), a prestigious law-maker, whose confession in the third act comes as the most powerful introspection with remorse and grievance of a patriotic German’s viewpoint of Hitler and his empire, deluded by Hitler’s saviour image, German people are desperate to believe he can save the troubled nation and blindly follows him, even conforms to his radical policies a passing phase for a victorious future. Lancaster is taciturn almost entirely up to his big action here, it is a greatly harrowing confession.

Judge Haywood is from a provincial background, rarely gets out of his own country, he is an amiable and easy of approach, Spencer stands out in bringing out a lifelike personage of his character with gravitas and charisma, culminating in the scenes where he pronounces the judgements, understated but each line is so puissant and mind-blowing. Obviously the whole task is a hot potato for him, during the time, political influence is also in the game to sway his verdict, when the impending Cold War is looming large. While getting to know the truth, he befriends a German widow Ms. Bertolt (Dietrich), whose husband is a general and has been executed in a trial and Dan lives in their house which is confiscated after the war. Ms. Bertolt cunningly indoctrinates her innocent identity and persuades him that the most important thing is to look upon the future, as life must go on no matter what. Dietrich is in her early sixties, but radiant in her passive manipulation under the surface of kindness and aplomb. She represents another type of the post-war German mentality, they cannot face the truth, and deceive themselves with oblivion, but the torture is persistent plaguing, her final scene where she is sitting in the shadow when the telephone is ringing, she knows it is Dan to say goodbye, yet her dispassionate silhouette tells everything, her scheme founders, and all the dignified facade is removed, to her Dan is just a chess she fails to manoeuvre, no heartfelt farewell needed, may alcohol can save her soul.

The prosecutor is Tad Lawson (Widmark), a US colonel who witnesses firsthand the utterly inhuman savagery in the concentration camps, he is vehement to condemn the defendants and obviously is carried away by implicating the whole nation as the sinner, the perpetrator, his indignation can be vicariously felt by viewers, but for once we can not all stand by his side, which denotes a different irrational extremity. Perhaps, the most formidable performance comes from the then unknown Maximilian Schell, who plays Hans Rolfe, the German defence attorney, and he wins an Oscar for it. Rolfe is very good at his job and over-confident in his professional acuteness of logic to serve his own assumptions. His aggressive but impassioned eloquence can tactfully penetrate the loopholes in key witnesses’ testimonies and elicit compassion in the most unlikely scenario, he is a patriot too, he has a clear vision of what Nazi has done, but for him, the only redemption is to save the last remnant of dignity for his homeland, no matter how improper and difficult it will be. Schell invests a great deal of passion, resolution and wisdom in his superb line-delivery of his star-making role.

Apart from Dietrich, the film also marks two other Golden Age megastar’s twilight career, it is Dietrich’s penultimate screen presence, but for Clift and Garland, their more troubled personal downward spirals are woefully apposite for their characters as two key witnesses here, Clift is Rudolph Petersen, a slow-witted victim of Nazi’s sterility operation and Garland is Irene Hoffman, a German woman who is involved with a Jewish man and claims he is only a father figure to her. They galvanize consummately in their very rare foil roles, both are enormously compelling and drastically stirring to watch, especially when audience can detect the traces of their own traumas which can be vividly reflected on screen, alas, both would die prematurely, Clift in 1966 at the age of 45 and Garland, three years later in 1969 at the age of 47.

Apart from Schell's win, Tracy, Clift and Garland are also Oscar-nominated, but that year the Academy was adamant to acknowledge new blood, Tracy is trounced by Schell, Clift and Garland and the film itself lost to WEST SIDE STORY (1961), only Mann’s writing added a second Oscar to this significantly illuminating lesson one can learn from the most horrifying manmade catastrophe and a telling evidence that law system must not be compromised by political agenda under any circumstances. Although Kramer’s directorial endeavour could be comparatively overlooked as the story mostly takes place in the courtroom, and it is the battle of tongue that captivates its audience, his innovation of 360-degree interior shots still can alert one’s attention of the mastery behind. In one word, the film is a vociferous diatribe towards all the warmongers among the human race, the scum of the earth!

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