Wait what!?

One of the special features that went with the DVD explained why they focused on the trial of the judges rather than the trial that came earlier, which was where a different tribunal dealt with the more direct offenders. I don't remember their exact reasons but I think it's something like this:

The movie was adapted from a play, so the focus wasn't the decision of the movie producers.

The playwright thought the trial of the judges was better for examining the specific issues he wanted to address. I think part of it was that the judges were responsible for declaring what was legal and what wasn't. So when Hitler passed laws, the judges had to uphold and implement them. The play and movie look at how the judges resolved their own moral dilemmas, how they balanced their personal ambition with their consciences, and what their own ideas of justice were. I think the producers and playwright thought judges were crucial to the propagation of the Nazi agenda throughout Germany and in making it seem respectable, even patriotic, to the German people.

The movie points out that the judges had the opportunity to denounce the Nazi laws, and could have presented an obstacle to Hitler if they had taken a stand against him. It may not have been effective, but at least the judges would not have been complicit with Hitler's atrocities.

I saw something very different. First, I saw original footage from American Liberators re the extent of the Nazi Atrocities when they liberated the camps in 1945: piles of dead corpses being bulldozed into a mass grave; emaciated victims of the concentration camps; young children--less than 10 years of age--showing tatoos.

There was one important/crucial scene after the showing of that raw footage. In the prison cafeteria, One of the Judges questions whether it was really possible to kill that many people. He turns around and asks Pohl--Oswald Pohl a leading Nazi in charge of organizing the camps--Pohl, was it possible to have that many people killed. And Pohl anwers: yes, it was possible to kill 10,000 people in a half-hour, 160,000 people in an eight hour day. And then he concludes: "It's dispossing of the bodies that's a problem." That was why the killing factories with crematoria were established. Previous to establishment of death factories in 1941, the Einsatzgruppen did the killing by gunshot over mass graves; but such a killing took a toll on the perpetrators. Plus, we are told, the ground heaved for days afterward where the bodies decomposed. Further, there would be evidence of a major atrocity long after. The killing factoris/gas chambers were intended to make killing anonymous, and crematoria made destruction of the evidence thorough.

The indictment against the Judges is a fictional tale which counterpoints the real indictment of the Nazi High Command. The fictional judges are being charged as accessories to the Nazi regime of terror by not defying the Nazi rule. The movie overlooks the small detail that to defy the Nazi High Command would put oneself in jeopardy for life.

The challange of the movie is to set this fictional tale within the reality of the Holocaust; the same challange all fictional responses to the Holocaust have--whether SOPHIE'S CHOICE or THE READER. By including that raw footage--real--within the fictional tale of the indictment, Stanley Kramer resolved an important point of any aesthetic about the Holocaust, the reality of the Holocaust, the extent and depth of the atrocity.

You are asking a question that the movie is not about, though it is tangential to the movie. The Einsatzgruppen were Nazi soldiers with responsibility for killing Jews, for implementing the details of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question--the Nazi euphemism for extermination. Scholars generally acknowledge that many, many people were never brought to justice for the role they played in the atrocities; generally, I think, only 10% of the perpetrators have been regarded as indicted for the atrocities. So even by the time of the movie being made in 1961, there were perpetrators of the atrocities walking about who had never been brought to justice.

Others on this thread have given ample information about the Abby Mann's wise intentions when writing this script.

As far as Lancaster's casting, he was a last minute replacement. Laurence Oivier had been cast in the role and could not do it for some reason. A number of casting coups and failures have ironically risen over the need for a last minute replacement.

I think the option of going to Lancaster had something to do with not only being desperate for a strong, talented actor as a last minute replacement, but also Lancaster has what the Nazi's would have called an "Aryan" look. Tall, heroically handsome and strong. Another example of this type of physical casting, to make a point, on Kramer's part actually is in "Inherit the Wind". If you look at the casting of a young 34 year old Claude Akins in the role of Rev. Brown you can see Kramer chose him in large part because of the prominent type brow and features that were vaguely reminiscent of the neanderthals, who oddly enough in some scientific circles are believed to have not become extinct as much as they inbred with the ancient homosapians. Look at Dick York as Cates, you will see it there and also in Frederick March's sometimes ape-like mannerisms he did as Brady.

I do agree with you that Kramer should have gone after any number of the fine German actors around at the time, for role of Janning. It would been more in line with the rest of the casting as the other defendants were German or in Werner Klemperer's case German Jewish. Lancaster did a very good job. But for me, it was not quite as seamless a fit seeing how well everyone else was cast.

One person who I think would have been great in the role was Kurt Jurgens. He was a wonderful actor and would have fit the bill of the larger than life Janning.

Movies though are a quirky animal when it comes to castings and sometimes directors are left with less than perfect choices and very rarely do they get their first choices. Lancaster may have been a stop-gap measure that had to occur. It is also possible that other German actors did not want to take the chance to play such a role. 1960 was not a great time for artists in Germany. For example although the German people wanted to have Marlene Dietrich perform in her former country, after one effort she refused to return as she was cruelly treated by the German Press. There was still alot of resentment for her brave efforts to support the Allies during WW2 by acting not only as a performer near the front lines, but for doing all she could to undermine Hitler and the Nazi's. These actors might have faced a similar retribution at that time. This film occured barely 15 years after WW2 ended.

This movie is simply badly written. If the point was to examine guilt by association, or the legitimization of Nazism, etc. it fails terribly. Janning (the only person who appears to actually be "on" trial) is repeatedly said to be a judge not a prosecutor or lawmaker. Haywood never shows any sign that he considers Frau Bertholt or the housekeepers guilty yet goes ballistic on Janning. When Haywood last sees Janning he accuses him of sentencing innocent people. Yet through out the trial this is disproved repeatedly. If anything this movie comes across as an unintentional effort to condemn Nuremberg and all who supported it.

why did they choose to focus on four judges? These guys had second hand influence on the atrocities of that war whereas the true murderers, the soldiers who directly harmed innocent people, should be the focus of the film.