Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Directed by Stanley Kramer

Screenplay by Abby Mann

Based on the teleplay "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1959) for the Playhouse 90 series by Abby Mann

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, William Shatner, Werner Klemperer, Torben Meyer, Martin Brandt, Kenneth MacKenna, and Ray Teal 

This movie has been on my watch list for a couple of months now. I was putting off watching the movie, because the movie is three hours. Now that I have seen the movie, I wish the movie was shorter.

After the atrocities of the Third Reich in WWII, four German defendants; Dr. Janning (Lancaster), Emil Hahn (Klemperer), Werner Lampe (Meyer), Friedrich Hofstetter (Brandt) are standing trial for war crimes against people during that time. A tribunal of judges including, Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Tracy) preside over the case with Col. Tad Lawson (Widmark) as the prosecutor and Hans Rolfe (Schell) as one of the defense attorneys.

I am going to get the negatives out of the way. It was a good movie overall. I felt that the scenes outside of the courtroom lacked the intensity for me to be fully engaged. The other thing that bothered me was the start of the trail the German participants spoke German with English translators and vice versa, then this is completely dropped in the first forty minutes of the movie. Why did the people needs to translator headsets if they spoke in the same language?

The performances of the cast were spectacular. Schell was commanding as Hans Rolfe. Tracy was more nuanced in his performance. Learning that Clift ad-libbed his lines, you could not tell. It was very convincing. Garland was haunting and heartbreaking in her time. The middle of the movie was the most impactful part of the movie. I could not believe my eyes. It was devastating.

Rating: 9/10