Judgment at Nuremberg

My biggest worry in this post is that I won't do the film justice. Appropriate that I begin with justice, since finding it and meting it out is the purpose of the film. Judgment at Nuremberg tells the story of the war crimes trial of four German judges who held office during the Third Reich. An American tribunal of judges hears the case and pronounces judgment. Before I start talking about the actors and story and all that, here's what I asked noted to myself at the beginning of the movie:

"It's very interesting and smart that they tell the story of a trial of the judges. All the war crimes attention goes to the big guys: Goebbels, Goering, Speer, etc. The men who were the face of the regime. But this movie gives us judges, men of the law, and that's a very clever way to go." I thought about a scene towards the end of Devil's Advocate, where Keanu Reeves asks Pacino why he chose to use a law firm to take things over and cause all the trouble. Paraphrasing here, "Because the law gets us into everything!" So as I thought about it, what better way to pick through a society and what it's going through in troubled times than to examine what the law becomes, how it is applied, and what it does to those applying it and suffering from the results? Great choice of material.

Judgment at Nuremberg comes to us from 1961, the same year as West Side Story, The Hustler, and Breakfast at Tiffany's. WSS won Best Picture, but Maximilian Schell won Best Actor for JAN. More on him in a bit. Directed by Stanley Kramer, who has four other films that I've seen: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen), Inherit the Wind, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and High Noon.

Actors you've heard of:
Spencer Tracy (my favorite actor of all time), Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift (who is skyrocketing up the charts after only two movies for me), William Shatner.

Actors you know but may not recognize: Ed Binns (also in Patton, my favorite movie), and Werner Klemperer. Think of it, ladies and gentlemen! This movie has Captain Kirk (Shatner) and Colonel Klink (Klemperer) in it at the same time! Holy cow.

Here's the hard part where I have to talk about the movie. I don't really know how, so I'll talk about the characters and see if I can piece it together from there. Tracy is the chief judge on the tribunal. A district court judge from Maine who knows nothing about Germany except what he's read or seen on TV. He tries to stay objective and dignified at all times. He befriends Mrs. Berthold (Dietrich), a widow who tries to convince him that not all Germans are monsters, and that in fact they did not know what was going on in the concentration camps.

Shatner is in a minor role as his assistant. He's in love with a German girl.

Lancaster is Dr. Ernst Janning, a very respected man with a great legal reputation. He is out of place among the other defendants, who are party hacks. He refuses to take part in his own defense. He is simultaneously contemptuous of the court that presumes to judge him, and contemptuous of himself for the things he has done in the name of patriotism.

Widmark is Col. Lawson, the US Army prosecutor. He is fiery and aggressive and relentless when questioning a witness. He is determined to see that no one gets off because "it was the law" or they were "just following orders". His experience in liberating concentration camps gives him an edginess when dealing with Nazis or Germans who "didn't know".

Judy Garland is Irene Hoffman, a German woman who was accused in the 30s of having relations with a Jewish man, a crime at the time. She was 39 at the time, but looks a few years older in the film, worn down by all that she has been through. This is not the Dorothy that cross-dressing men love and adore.

Maximilian Schell plays Hans Rolfe, the lead defense attorney representing Janning. Since I already mentioned that he won an Oscar, you may have guessed that he was pretty good. He wasn't. He was marvelous. He is smart and clever and passionate and sincere. He quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes. He sets devious traps for the prosecution's witnesses. He is proud of his country, and does not want to see it overrun by Americans on one side or Russians on the other. He tries to salvage some shred of dignity for the German people by saving Janning, one of their best. Schell is a great, great German actor. He would later be in A Bridge Too Far. (and also Krakatoa, East of Java. The great thing about that is that Krakatoa actually lay WEST of Java, not east.

I save Montgomery Clift for last because once again, just like he did in A Place in the Sun, he really steals the show for me. His character is Rudolph Peterson, whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis because they were communists. He was forced to undergo sterilization by one of the defendant judges. In APITS, I mentioned how he was able to show so many different emotions in his face so vividly. He does the same thing here. Rudolph is not an intelligent man. He is scared and intimidated by the setting and the men in it. But he is also angry and stubborn, which breeds a certain defiance. They ask him probing questions, which makes him sad and uncomfortable. He is confused and ashamed, certain and proud. All of these things and more play over his face, like ripples in a waterfall, shimmering from here to there, one right after the other. His nervous and fidgety body language adds to our impression of who Rudolph is, and anyone with a heart pities him, especially when Rolfe questions his mental capacity (and that of his mother) and whether that was the real reason for his sterilization (German law at the time required sterilization for the incompetent to prevent them from reproducing more 'deficient' Germans). There is a gripping moment where he pulls out a picture of his mother to show the court.

"My, my mother, what you say about her, she was a woman, a servant woman who worked hard. She was a hard working woman. And it is not fair, not fair what you say! I want to show you, I have here her picture. I would like that you look at it. I would like you to judge. I want that you tell me – was she feeble-minded? My mother – was she feeble minded? Was she?"

Combine that dialogue with Clift's acting, and I get chills just thinking about it. He is beyond magnificent, in my opinion.

As the film goes along, it introduces more of the context in which the trial is taking place. The Russians have blockaded Berlin, leading to a massive airlift. The Cold War is starting to emerge as the way of the world. The US will need the support of the German people, they say, and sentencing their respected citizens and leaders to harsh sentences is not the way to get it.

It also deals with the scope of guilt for the Holocaust and the Nazi part. If these judges are guilty, it is like saying that all Germans are guilty. At least that is how Mrs. Bertholt sees it. These men loved their country and were only doing what they thought was necessary to protect it, they said. If some few must suffer, then it is worth it for the greater good. Of course, it's a lot easier to love your country when it's not oppressing YOU.

Even though I don't usually think much about this sort of thing, I couldn't help noticing a couple/three things about how some of the issues in the movie are relevant today. "Judges to not make the law, they enforce the law." That was part of Rolfe's defense, and how many times have we heard that the last few years? We're occupying another country, something Col. Lawson states we're not cut out for (we're too forgiving, he says). We have to balance what's in our immediate national interest with a larger sense of justice.

I love this movie. I think it's fantastic. It's long at three hours, six minutes, but I recommend it to anybody and everybody. I've probably left out some things, so I may have to revisit it in the future.