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If this is not considered as one of THE great films of all time, then all of us film fans should pack up bags and go home I cannot fault anyone, any scene, anything in this film. The dialogue races along in its smooth yet supremely captivating style. You grab a film like this, see a whole host of famous actors, and wonder if such a mix could ever work. It does, believe me, it really, really does.

Tracy. He was given the most powerful of dialogues, he presents it to us in a way that does not shout at you, yet holds you in a vice like grip every time he comes on screen. With his characteristic method of looking down whilst talking, hands in pocket, that small sly look up that he does, vintage Spencer, just how you would imagine a judge to be, or should be.

The supporting cast, again, never lets the film down. Some have the opportunity to step up a notch, Snell, Widmark, and others play their roles in a more subtle manner, Garland and Dietrich. And others just wipe away the floor with their presence, Clift and Lancaster for example.

And the story by Abby Mann - incredible.

Shot in black and white, it makes you think, it makes you smile, it will make you sad, and in the end you will be all the better for having seen one of the greatest films ever made, you will be richer for the experience, and you will be wiser.

You will also be able to say that you saw what Hollywood can do, you saw what great actors can do when put amongst their peers and are not 'stars' of a movie but are part of a larger ensemble.

And you will also see why this particular group were, genuinely, the very best Hollywood had to offer, period.

Judgement At Nurmeberg is a 1961 film about four Nazi Judges are in trial for crimes against humanity. Well let me just start out by saying that this is a very sad, powerful film. I was expecting it to be very boring and I guess I underestimated it. The film is also very well written, so well written that actually it makes you really think. I'm happy that it won an Oscar for writing.

The best quality about the film HAS to be the acting. Judy Garland, I think should of won a Supporting Actress. This is her finest performance ever, and I'm sad she didn't win one. Maximilian Schell gives the performance of a lifetime in his role as the defense attorney for the judges. He truly deserved his Oscar because he was very powerful. Spencer Tracy also gave a quite exceptional performance as he always had. (He isn't a Two-Time Oscar Winner for nothing. As for Montgomery Clift he deserved his Oscar Nomination. I am kind of ticked off that Marlene didn't get an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress. I always feel she is underrated.

As for Stanley Kramer (The Director) he had real talent and this film shows it. The 9-Time Oscar nominated Director should've of won an Oscar for Best Director for Judgement at Nuremberg. I hope his talent though will be remembered for many years to come.

My Overall Consensus is that the movie definitely succeeds due to the Extraordinary Performances and the Quite Exceptional Writing.

You Should see this Film. 10/10

I once read a review of this film that criticized the fact that the American chief prosecutor as played by Richard Widmark was a less sympathetic and engaging character than the defending lawyer, Herr Rolfe as portrayed by Max Schell. Schell's Oscar winning performance illuminated the "shattering truth" that the film reveals about Nazism. Extremely able and educated men were able to rationalize what they did with an irresistible logic. They loved their country and, in a time of a national crisis, found it necessary to implement certain measures. As expounded by Rolfe, it all sounds so logical and reasonable. He also cites the fact that many world leaders actually commended Hitler upon his leadership in getting Germany out of the Depression as swiftly as he did.

Widmark's character, Lawson, is understandably appalled by Herr Rolfe's defence of the indefencible and therefore he pulls no punches. He wants those responsible to be held fully responsible but he finds Germans who are ready to extenuate and rationalize. After he is told to tone down his demands for justice, Lawson acerbically retorts, "There are no Nazis in Germany. It was those damned Eskimos."

The moment that illuminates how pure reason without humanity is so dangerous is when Pohl, a right hand man for Eichman, explains how it was possible to kill millions of people in purely technical terms. His explanation as he eats his lunch is devoid of any hint of human empathy for the victims he has so blithely exterminated. His was a job that was the logical extension of a policy and he carried it out with a detached and technical logic.

The key point that the film makes is that to be logical is not always to be morally right.

It is so easy to dismiss this as a story of other people in another time in another land. Unfortunately, what was done then, is being done by the leaders of our country in the name of protection from terrorists, and we, the people, sit silently by and let it happen just as the German people did seven decades ago.

We need to watch films like this over and over to remind us of what is important and what we, as civilized humans, can be reduced to out of fear.

This is another great film by the fantastic Abby Mann, who died last month. He won an Oscar for his screenplay, and it was well deserved.

Maximilian Schell was simply fantastic, as was Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, and Judy Garland. Director Stanley Kramer brought out the best in these actors, and others like Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, William Shatner, and Werner Klemperer.

Don't look upon it as three hours of cinema, but as a class in humanity as only Abby Mann could write.

This 1961 film is just about as close to timeless in its impact as you can get, in its searing treatment of the universal themes of law, justice, and humanity. This far downstream, it's worth recalling that the movie was made just 15 years after the end of WWII when the aftermath of the war was still reverberating. It's set during the "Nuremberg Trials" of 1947-49 during which high-ranking German generals, judges, politicians and others responsible for the atrocities of the Nazi regime were tried against still-evolving standards of international law. The movie takes us through just one of these, the trial of four high-placed judges, and I was actually surprised to learn that there was an earlier, much shorter version of this drama shown 2 years earlier on the prestigious old TV series Playhouse 90. But the movie carries a wallop that no TV show could have given.

I had to check the history to be sure, but though the bare bones of the time, place, and setting are accurate, all the characters and details are entirely fictional. I think maybe this was the correct choice, because it could allow the script to concentrate entirely on two major themes in its 3-hour run time: first and foremost, the courtroom drama, and second, a look into German postwar society when most were desperate to forget and try to get back to normal living. The side plot is kind of disposable -- some of those scenes drag -- but the courtroom scenes that are the spine of the movie are intense, claustrophobic, and utterly absorbing. Because of the imbalance of the two parts of the story, I rate this as "only" 9/10, but my bottom-line message is simply to see it, any way you can. There is lots here that resonates with what is happening now all around us.

The cast is flat-out astonishing: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift. None of these giants are still with us, but if you want to see what the classic Hollywood stars were capable of, this is just about the best place to go. (Schell won the Best Actor Oscar for this, which is hard to argue with once you see him work.) Each one of these multiple leads has at least one powerhouse scene -- always in the courtroom, where all of the true interest of the film takes place -- that is guaranteed to stick in your mind. Tracy and Widmark were in lots and lots of movies, and they tended to play every role in much the same way: Tracy played the aw-shucks average guy you could imagine as a next-door neighbor, Widmark always seemed to have that flat delivery with an edge of menace -- but here they stretch themselves. Widmark's narration of the horrors revealed in the concentration camps (which in the setting of the film were uncovered just two years before) accompanied by hard-to-watch film records is impressively spare and restrained, and Tracy as the leading tribunal judge gives a summation speech that has real weight.

Even among all these leads, however, Burt Lancaster stands out. Playing a respected and even renowned German judge who inexplicably stepped into the dark side, late in the film he delivers a long, uninterrupted testimony that is electrifying. Up till that point he had been only a looming Presence lurking at the edge of the proceedings, but he is the key defendant everyone mentions repeatedly. When will he speak? What will he say? The dramatic tension pays off handsomely. Lancaster was an amazingly physical kind of actor, and by that I don't mean just physique or action-hero roles. But the camera is drawn to him in a way that is hard to explain: he can get your attention just by standing up from a chair. I think much of it is due to a kind of stillness of posture, an utter spareness of movement. I can't think of a single modern actor like that.

It's fun to note that one of the supporting actors in this stellar cast who IS still with us is William Shatner. As the military aide to Judge Haywood (Tracy), he's there from beginning to end, and he does very nicely. Several years later, he'd move on to become Captain Kirk.

Maybe understandably for the time, all the speaking roles for the "German" characters, except for Maximilian Schell and Marlene Dietrich, were played by Americans with fake mild accents. Today that wouldn't work . I'm visualizing a re-mounting of this piece with a true international cast, but I'm not sure anyone wants to revisit the Nazi era in quite so unsparing a way.