Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Director:

Stanley Kramer

Writer:

Abby Mann (story)

Release Date:

18 December 1961 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | History

Tagline:

More than a motion picture...It is an overwhelming experience in human emotion you will never forget!

Plot:

In 1948, an American court in occupied Germany tries four Nazi judges for war crimes.

Plot Keywords:

Judge | Nazi | Trial | Germany | War Crime

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 12 wins & 21 nominations

Cast

Spencer Tracy	...	Chief Judge Dan Haywood
Burt Lancaster	...	Dr. Ernst Janning
Richard Widmark	...	Col. Tad Lawson
Marlene Dietrich	...	Mrs. Bertholt
Maximilian Schell	...	Hans Rolfe
Judy Garland	...	Mrs. Irene Hoffman Wallner
Montgomery Clift	...	Rudolph Petersen
Edward Binns	...	Sen. Burkette
Werner Klemperer	...	Emil Hahn
Torben Meyer	...	Werner Lampe
Martin Brandt	...	Friedrich Hofstetter
William Shatner	...	Capt. Harrison Byers
Kenneth MacKenna	...	Judge Kenneth Norris
Alan Baxter	...	Brig. Gen. Matt Merrin
Ray Teal	...	Judge Curtiss Ives

Also Known As:

Judgement at Nuremberg

Runtime:

186 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.75 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:16 | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:S (1990) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 (1961) | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Roxlom Films Inc.

Trivia:

[June 2008] Ranked #10 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Courtroom Drama".

Goofs:

Factual errors: The actual text of the Nuremberg Law ("Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor", promulgated September 1935) only prescribes a prison term as punishment for "extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood", not death as stated in the script. So Mr. Feldenstein could not have been sentenced to death by a German court. Unfortunately, this would not have prevented the Gestapo from arresting such people and sending them without a legal trial to a concentration camp, where death was a very likely outcome. The Nazis rarely bothered with trials in such matters.

Quotes:

Ernst Janning: We have fallen on happy times, Herr Hahn. In old times it would have made your day if I'd deigned to say good morning to you. Now that we are here in this place together... you feel obliged to tell me what to do with my life... Listen to me, Herr Hahn, there have been terrible things that have happened to me in my life. But the worst thing that has ever happened... is to find myself in the company of men like you.

Movie Connections:

Featured in A Tribute to Stanley Kramer (2004) (V)

Soundtrack:

Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13

Revelation of Horror

This is a fine film by a fine director, but I can only hope that Stanley Kramer, in committing to full length film a television story, knew at heart the message his movie was trying to say. Because this is truly a message movie, for all mankind, but if the reviews I've read on this site are any indication, the message has been lost to some degree.

I've entitled my review "Revelation of Horror", but the horror revealed was not the Holocaust. That had already been revealed, although Kramer's film certainly lent its emotional impact. The revelation was a deep, true insight into how it happened, and the horror is that it happened in a civilized country. Few on this earth can imagine the true horror of Nazi Germany--I've read criticism of Widmark's Colonel Lawson as too preachy, but the character and the acting conveyed the mission of one who actually saw the horrors, beyond any scope we can identify with.

Kramer's achievement is that everything in this movie reminds us that the Nazi's used every facet of civilization, no matter how minute, to foster their extermination of their enemies, to inculcate it as an ordinary part of life. That was why judges were chosen to portray the issue of "obeying orders" versus "human decency." Herr Rolf is "forced" to defend the worst criminals imaginable, and yet his very defense and the principles behind it are abused in the process, used as a weapon against the very law they represent. Thus did the Nazis prevail with the willing acquiescence of the German people, and the abominable disregard of the rest of the world.

The other horror revealed in this film is the incessant excusing of it. Beyond the obvious pleas of the guilty ("We didn't know", or as one judge says to another, "Was it possible to kill like that?") are the multiplicity of subtle excuses: the reminder of centuries' old German culture, Rolf's plaintive cry of "unfairness" at the showing of the death camp films because of their inflammatory nature, the invocation of "Lili Marlene" throughout the film, to name just a few. While the song evokes sadness, a guilty German society meant for it to invoke sadness. Long before Germany had its country destroyed by bombs, it had its soul destroyed by Hitler.

Because this is a courtroom drama, respecting the sacred role of the Rule of Law in safeguarding humanity, almost every scene, every line is a statement that Nazi Germany perverted the Rule of Law, as did the very defense of the war criminals. But what is principle on a small scale of a single man being judged by society becomes outrage when used to defend the indefensible on an impossibly massive scale. Tracy's character at the film's end has a realization that this is so, as well as an awareness that what happened in Germany during the Third Reich was an Aristotelian tragedy for anyone touched by it, even remotely, so that any personal considerations (such as Mrs. Berthold) are made utterly impossible.

Rolf's speech about the guilty responsibility of the rest of the world was valid--but he was indicting the world to save one man. Where have we heard that in our own time? This quality about "Judgment at Nuremburg" makes its message forever fresh--and its warnings.