It appears I have been starting my movie reviews rather confusingly; and I stay confused for the time being. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) isn’t a confusing one; it is rather direct. There are no hidden subtexts or double meanings underlying the plot. It was simple and yet a complicated one; I’ll explain further later on. There have been a lot of movies based on WWII, the Holocaust and the war crimes in during and after the war had ended, and even now; don’t just count the Hollywood. Many of the movies that I write about are around the time of WWII and a lot of them have effects of war within. Even there are movies that oppose war, any war for that matter. I guess I’m going off track again. Let’s get back to it. I wondered why I haven’t watched a movie directed and produced by Stanley Kramer and no, I won’t beat myself over it as I try to watch a film every day and sometimes two. I plan to watch more of his directed ones.

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I know usually in the beginning I talk about the actors and the director and writer and I will do that and then some more. Well, the director I already mentioned and the writer is Abby Mann. The casting of the movie is crucial and here we have Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Marlene Dietrich, Werner Klemperer, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift; and that’s a heavy one. I did mention “then some” and that is a little bit about the characters they played. Spencer Tracy played Chief Judge Dan Haywood who was the chief judge of the trial of this film; you’ll see the conflicts he faces and the more he tries to know the less answers he gets. Burt Lancaster as defendant Dr. Ernst Janning who was Minister for Justice during the time the Nazi Party was in control of Germany and along with him were defendant Emil Hahn (played by Klemperer), Friedrich Hofstetter (played by Martin Brandt) and Werner Lampe (Torben Meyer). Although everyone at first claimed to be not guilty, you’ll notice that initially though Janning shows restraints but later his remorse can’t go unnoticed. And we also have prosecutor Col. Tad Lawson (Widmark) who’s world is somewhat black and white but a passionate speaker of his beliefs and on the defendants’ side defense counsel Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) who, to the best of his abilities, defended his clients masterfully.

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The story is enthralling, and it’s probably that courtroom dramas and all that “justice getting served” is something I don’t always feel comfortable about; and the complicated feelings. “Why complicated” I’ll give you the basic one-liner that you can find on Google; the film is about a single trial of Nuremberg Military Tribunals conducted before the U.S. military and the trial was the Judges’ trial. I often pick out movies that confuse me and I try to entangle my thoughts but this one, I felt sympathetic towards the accused and couldn’t overlook the facts. Judge Dan Haywood steps into Nuremberg and while headed for the place he was supposed to live till the end of judgement, the war torn city made him uneasy. The first day of the trial and prosecutor and defense counsel appealed to the court to heed their way; then the trial starts and many buried skeletons were dug up. The sterilization Rudolph Peterson (Montgomery Clift) and many others in hospitals around and the law that surfaced which stated to send the mentally challenged population to get sterilized in the chosen hospitals. Haywood also happen to have a chance encounter with Frau Bertholt (Dietrich) who was the owner of the house he was living in and later developed quite a friendship with one another but the trial was going to stress over every relationship, or judgement or emotion, everything.

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The film turns darker when a case of “blood defilement” got dragged into court once again; a Jewish man got sentenced to death for having explicit relationship with a Gentile 16 years old girl. There were some fine arguments that were placed by the defense counsel; should the defendant be a traitor to their own country and leave it when it’s at worst condition, what the defendants did was to minimize the severity of the situation and more. When a riled up Irene Hoffmann (Judy Garland) was at a point of a complete breakdown, Janning stops counsel Rolfe and announces that he’d be making a statement. Judge Haywood was trying to figure this man out; to him a man of such stature as Janning could do such a thing is beyond abhorrent. Defendant Janning’s statement pointed out how the Third Reich made many of his dreams come true, how important he felt and what he did meant something to him, how his duty and his importance blindsided him and how deeply his guilt ran through him. The genocide, the mass grave, how could the defendants not know what was happening in all the concentration camps and getting rid of evidence; how could they not know! Haywood was aware of the Cold War and that the support of Germany would mean a great deal and so he was at crossroads in between geopolitical convenience and justice for all the people and other war-torn countries.

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I"m sure you’ll find it hard to restraint yourself from questioning how could Janning or other judges do such a thing or what happen to the human in them or how could they not know of such a thing and then you’ll see that under the thumb of a maniac barely anything “one’s own way” get down; even though they tried to impose least sentences but they still had to sign the fate of the thousands. One or thousand; atrocity is what it is.