And when witnesses discuss the subservience of the German courts to politics and the transformation of trials into public circuses, the dialogue contains tones that clearly hint at McCarthyism, witch-hunts, and American Congressional investigating committees. He plays his part with such intuitively passionate conviction that he alone goes far toward explaining the basis for West German recovery. A REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS OF ‘JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG’. As Rolfe begins retrying these people, Janning is stirred into a recognition and awareness of his own complicity. Judgement at Nuremberg Judgement at Nuremberg Introduction Judgment at Nuremberg was released in 1961 as a fictional movie with scenes related to actual events that took place after the World War II. Janning's voice drowns out Rolfe's protests: "My defense counsel would have you believe that we were not aware of concentration camps. The trial quickly centers on resolving the question of Janning’s guilt. Repetitions usually imply that an attitude or a prophecy—that something—is being confirmed or ironically undercut; they suggest a connection and a density of thought. This is how it looked at Hiroshima (as we are reminded by the defense attorney who argues at one point that the Germans are not the only mass murderers in the world), and this is how it may very well look tomorrow or a year from now unless the “philosophy that enabled the Nazis to come to power [and which] was not unrelated to the motive in their being released” is somehow inhibited. Certainly the film’s strongest virtue is its insistence on leaving no doubt about its judgment—on facing not simply the logic of its dramatic form but the ultimate demand of its subject matter. We have staked a great deal on our belief in their expressed commitment to democratic ideals; whether justified by military necessity or not, America has taken a risk. PART 1. Toward the end of the trial, the Russians blockade Berlin, and by so doing make clear to the West the important part Germany will have to play in defending Europe. "Now we're down to the business of judging the doctors, businessmen and judges. I … Your Honors, Germany alone is not guilty. We all know what his verdict will be and that none of the entreaties of his fellow Americans—not even the recommendation of the prosecutor—will sway him. In fact he is not suggesting a parallel at all, but a continuum. There is an abrupt cut to a shot of coffee being poured into a paper cup. Perhaps it is most brave in its determination to take an absolutely clear stand concerning the guilt of the men on trial. Where were we? Are we not to find the American industrialists guilty? Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American courtroom drama film directed by Stanley Kramer, written by Abby Mann and starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift. The majority of the issues taking place before and during WWII in Nazi Germany were social and terrible for people … It requires no great perception to see him as the symbol of young Germany, trying to assert its innocence and restore all it lost in the war. The fourth, Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster), is also a common type, but of a superior order. As the film ends, the following notice appears upon the screen: “On 14 July, 1949 judgment was rendered in the last of the second Nuremberg trials. They are, respectively, the archetypal Sadist and Coward fashioned by Hollywood over a span of forty years. The film takes place as the trials are petering out. Ambitious, three hours long, Judgment at Nuremberg depicts a more or less fictional trial in 1948 of four German judges who had sentenced large numbers of men during the Nazi regime to concentration camps. As a result, both the U.S. army prosecutor (Richard Widmark) and the American judge are told to “go easy.” A nation seeing its former judges given harsh prison terms might not be eager to assist the political bloc which passed the sentences. Janning ultimately acknowledges his guilt; but at the other extreme, Emil Hahn continues to belch up protestations of innocence, claiming the Cold War as his vindication. The particular trial with which Judgment at Nuremberg deals is one of the so-called second series, involving lawyers, industrialists, financiers, diplomats, and businessmen of the Third Reich, and the American judge (Spencer Tracy) who has come all the way from Maine to hear the case is genuinely curious to know what this second level of Nazidom was like and how the four lawyers in the dock could possibly have served under Hitler. Now this is a provocative point, not often made by even our most astute and responsible observers, and it is all the more remarkable, even to some extent bizarre, that it should come to us in the oversimplified images of a pompously directed moving picture, that Spencer Tracy and Judy Garland—those Virgils of our childhood—should rise again to show us the way. Given these obviously high intentions and the film’s conceivable achievement, one can only be particularly disappointed at the failure of Judgment at Nuremberg; for it is a bad movie in almost every respect. From the very start of the film, there are pressures on Spencer Tracy to take a moderate view of the defendants. The film further undercut its possible meaningfulness by portraying the man who represented Bryant as a rube and a humorless slob—no other word will do—and the man who represented Darrow as an urbane wit and meticulous eater who never belched. "Where were we when Hitler began shrieking his hate in the Reichstag?...Where were we when every village in Germany had a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children who were being carried off to God knows where? Reflections on "Judgment at Nuremberg" A video presentation of this material is available here . . It is instead a part of Abby Mann’s polemic—a set piece intended to tell the audience what the film is really about. Rolfe recalls: "the statement, 'my country right or wrong' was made by a great American patriot. Some people think they shouldn't be judged at all." In fact they do nothing at all in the film but contribute their physical presence. It is indeed significant that American critics have found Judgment at Nuremberg "extreme." This is not to say that the writing is wearing or that Mann is guilty of extraneous detail, but that the arguments involved require considerable development. These people inflate the movie with dramatic foreshadowing and then, before one recognizes that they have been misleading gestures rather than true accomplishments, they are swallowed by the plot—like the deceptive transitions. More, the movie wants to confront, via the blockade, the dilemmas of international politics, and to portray, through the attitudes of Janning (the “old” Germany) and his attorney (the “new” one), thirty years of a nation’s history. As a bit of Hollywood folklore goes: “If you want a message, send for Western Union.”. In the film, the German defendants are merged into four characters: Ernst Janning, Emil Hahn, Werner The three German judges who quickly get relegated to second place at the trial say very little in the course of the film. Analysis Of Judgement Of Nuremberg. In short, it is obvious that Mann is not chiefly interested in this aspect of the trial at all. Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux and Stanley Kramer's new work fall into the latter. ), or are they meant to denote two stages, the incipient and the full-blown, in the evolution of an evil? Ambitious, three hours long, Judgment at Nuremberg depicts a more or less fictional trial in 1948 of four German judges who had sentenced large numbers of men during the Nazi regime to concentration camps. Mainly, though, the immediacy of Judgment at Nuremberg derives from the film’s multiple purpose, a major part of which is the attempt to examine boldly the horror of the Nazi concentration camps—film clips screened during the trial show lamps made of human skin and emaciated bodies being piled into wide, deep ditches after the liberation. In case the audience might miss the point, the most reprehensible of the four defendants (an unrepentant Nazi) rises as the judge completes the reading of his verdict and shouts, “Today you sentence us. That the leaders of the Third Reich and Nazi state institutions would be tried for war crimes was not as obvious during the years of World War II as it seems today. The real case for Ernst Janning's innocence, as Rolfe knows, can be won only by proving the veracity and legality of his decisions. Judgment at Nuremberg is an astonishingly intelligent film which succeeds in raising, despite the occasional fumbling of its director, Stanley Kramer, some of the darkest questions of this dark age. The film also seeks to understand the internal public support given the government that built and maintained these camps, and to assign guilt for the monstrous evil they represented (the defense attorney asks: but did not Churchill praise Hitler “in 1938?”). Because of this extralegal pressure, the trial of the four Nazi judges becomes a sort of parallel to the trials they themselves conducted. In The Defiant Ones, where Kramer was aided considerably by Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis—as two convicts, Southern Negro and poor white, thrown together during a prison break—he made one of the few movies that suggests how America looks from its social and economic basements and how a man’s spirit might be damaged by the sight. . They are so shocking, indeed, so absolutely overpowering in their gigantic obscenity, that it doesn’t occur to one until long afterward that the defense should have objected to them (throughout the film the defense objects to almost everything the prosecution says), that the judges themselves should have stopped this demonstration, that even the censors in Hollywood should have intervened. Judgment at Nuremberg is an unsettling account of the war crimes committed in Germany during World War II, especially in the concentration camps. For better or worse the success of his films has depended on the intelligence with which they developed their themes. The most attention-grabbing of the Nuremberg trials was that of the major war criminals in 1945-4… The movie Judgment at Nuremberg which was released in 1961, was a fictionalized account of the Trial of four judges who implemented the orders of Hitler’s Secret Service to carry out mass extermination of Jews. While the art film emphasizes texture and offers ultimates, and the commercial movie emphasizes plot and offers entertainment, the message picture chooses to emphasize a single problem, and it offers for exposure one tension-filled area of contemporary society. And yet Judgment at Nuremberg is confused, poorly made, and, worse, even disingenuous. Many liberal intellectuals have discounted the seriousness of the film because it relies on Hollywood's popular technique and personnel (Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift turn in superb performances). Forms Eight Committees in Response to Harassment and Gender Bias Concerns, Harvard Cancels Summer 2021 Study Abroad Programming, UC Showcases Project Shedding Light on How Harvard Uses Student Data, Four Bank Robberies Strike Cambridge in Three Weeks, After a Rocky Year, Harvard Faces an Uncertain Economic Climate in 2021, Hollister Says. SURVEY … Finally a glimmering of understanding that the very philosophy that enabled the Nazis to come to power was not unrelated to the motive in their being released set the groundwork for my premise.”. These people should realize that there is a wealth of professional film-making skill in Hollywood, capable of more power and subtlety than any other cinema in the world. (He comes from Maine too. But the connections here are meaningless. Certainly he is crushed by what he has seen. If the film knows, or understands that its juxtapositions are at all unclear, it does not say. Judgment at Nuremberg, a three-hour film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer and written by Abby Mann, opened last month and has already provoked more heated discussion than any American movie within memory. War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Though he refuses at first to enter a plea—his three compatriots plead not-guilty—his young attorney (Maximilian Schell) passionately believes that Janning must be saved so as to help lead the new Germany.