‘We who know our guilt must admit it… whatever the pain and humiliation...’
Every now and again, a film comes along that is not just cinematically important but culturally important. At its best, cinema has the power to change perceptions. To shine a light on injustices. To force the viewer to confront their own outlook and beliefs. Judgement at Nuremberg, unsurprisingly considering the subject matter, is one of those films. Handily, it also features some of the best acting in the history of cinema…
Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) must decide whether four judges that served under the Nazis are guilty of war crimes. The defendants are made up of Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster), Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer), Werner Lampe (Torben Meyer) and Friedrich Hofstetter (Martin Brandt), although it is Lancaster’s electric turn as Janning that takes the headlines. Elsewhere, Maximilian Schell gives a performance for the ages as defence counsel Hans Rolfe and Richard Widmark carries a quiet dignity as Rolfe’s opposite number prosecutor Col. Ted Lawson. The cast is completed by such luminaries as Montgomery Clift, William Shatner, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland – the latter of which is dynamite throughout her relatively short appearance. Put simply, this is one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled and Schell was correctly rewarded with a Best Actor gong from the Academy.
Now, I’m a sucker for a courtroom drama. As an English teacher and song lyric enthusiast, the written and spoken word holds a fascination for me that ensures that many of my favourite films may be decried elsewhere as being overly florid and verbose. But if you are someone like me, someone who is happy to listen to people talk for three hours without even a hint of anything else going on, this is the film for you. In that respect, it recalls other sterling courtroom dramas such as 12 Angry Men, Anatomy of a Murder and The Trial of the Chicago 7, but what makes Judgement at Nuremberg so significant is the subject matter and the execution. By flashing images on screen of actual footage from the liberation of the concentration camps, director Stanley Kramer coerces the viewer into facing the truth about these men and what they were responsible for, and yet, the central question of the film remains – is standing by and doing nothing the same as guilt? That’s for you to decide.