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.
