Rent Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)

A Warning to the World - Judgement at Nuremberg review by QOW

This is an incredible film. What are the implications of the decisions that we are making in the world today? What started as a temporary measure created fertile ground to spawn unthinkable atrocities. Can it happen again? This will certainly make you think.

Soul-searching Courtroom Drama - Judgement at Nuremberg review by CV

Writing a review concerning a crucial and heart-searching courtroom drama, which had ensuing profound moral and political implications, seems very strange while at the present moment leaders of the once national victors of WWII are riding roughshod over their own legal procedures. What on earth would those officers of law make of our travesty of government today?

Four former German judges practising under the Nazi regime are charged with complicity and knowledge of the mass extermination programme instigated under Hitler. The prosecution is naturally visceral and passionate including horrific images of the death camps being shown on film during the procedures. But the defence draws attention to the hypocrisy of the allied nations who one way or another have supported Hitler's regime before armed conflict and compares the atrocity of the devastation of the atom bombs with that of the concentration camps.

The case is conducted during the beginning of the Cold War(1949) and it is of paramount importance that the West can rely on German co-operation if things turn adverse in the East. Germany needs to regain self-respect and credibility in order to resist communism and so the verdict on the four once eminent German judges is a very sensitive issue.

The strength of the drama itself rests on a triumvirate of great American actors of the past: Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark and Burt Lancaster as one of the German judges.

Brilliant 1961 Film about How to Judge the Nazi Judges post-WWII, with an All Star Cast - Judgement at Nuremberg review by PV

Want to see Captain Kirk William Shatner star in a film with Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich (age 60), Montgomery Clift (gay lover of Roddy McDowell), Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich and Maximilian Schell (who won best actor Oscar 1962). Go no further, it is all here.

This also won best adapted screenplay Oscar 1962 I started as a play I think).

It is a long film, but worth it. The trial is set AFTER the famous 1946 trial when the big Nazis were mostly condemned to death and some like Speer dodged the noose. This, I think, is set in 1948 - it mentions the communist putsch in Czechoslovakia and the suicide/murder defenestration of the Czech prime minister which happened then.

Filmed in 1961 when to be fair MOST people just wanted to forget the war and get on with life. Why 97% of the SS got away scott free; a tiny minority were arrested and stood trial. Most did not, Many lived openly in Germany after the war, protected by networks, and in France, Italy, of course fascist Spain where Nazis could live openly (like the Belgian Flemish Nazi leader) - and also the USA, plus Australia and notoriously South America where Mengele went.

This is a courtroom drama and I do not usually like them, but I could not keep my eyes off the screen here because of the sheer quality of the writing, acting, direction and the philosophical heft of the issues addressed - what is the law? Who judges the judges? Who is guilty?

Great stuff. 5 stars. One of the must-see films about the Second World War and of the 20th century.