Review: Judgement at Nuremberg

Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)
Stanley Kramer

There are few movies that dwell for three hours on a topic where there are no black and white characters and there are certainly no right and wrong answers. However, Judgement at Nuremberg is one of them.

Spencer Tracy, as Judge Haywoood, is well aware that in the US is an ordinary judge who has been elected out of a federal court. He has been assigned a task only because several others did not want it. The task is to preside over a case of four judges from Nazi Germany. They are accused of carrying out atrocities by passing judgements in line with the extreme Nazi policies.

One of the accused is an eminent jurist, author of several books and one who was known to not be too friendly towards Hitler. The role is played with remarkable restraint by Burt Lancaster.

The question at hand is the following:

During Nazi rule ordinary people went about doing their jobs according to the law of the land. In the process they violated basic human right. Many were however obeying the law. The punishment for not following the law of the land was harsh. In the process what should people to. The movie discusses this topic, not with the common man in mind, but with people who wield power to hand down sentences, but could perhaps have changed the system if they tried and most importantly if the actions were justified within some higher, unwritten but apparent law that human beings should be intuitively aware of.

Lancaster in his role as Dr. Ernst Janning earnestly explains what Hitler meant to people like him. He restored pride, he drove away fear of today, tomorrow, neighbors and instilled a confidence that the Germans had not known since the end of the First War. He also explains that Hitlers actions were distasteful, however he rationalizes his actions by saying the positives outweighed the negatives and more importantly the personality cult of Hitler would die with him.

Maximilian Schell as the lead defense attorney is brilliant in explaining away the horrors of the distorted justice meted out by the Nazi judges.

It is Spencer Tracy who makes it clear to everyone that human decency is paramount. He sees it in the commom people on the street, he sees it in Marlene Dietrich who plays the role of the wife of a dead General, he sees a shocking absence of it in the Nazi judges. He is also sensitive to the gradual pressure being applied by the victors to not hand out harsh sentences to the Nazi judges for the fear of alienating the German people. Finally he goes by what he thinks is right knowing fully well that vested interests will eventually change the decision.