"We who know our guilt must admit it...whatever the pain and humiliation."

Rating: 6/10 (22 June 2016)

Fictionalized version of history as four German judges and prosecutors are accused of crimes against humanity for their involvement in atrocities committed under the Nazi regime in a military tribunal in Nuremberg. Spencer Tracy portrays the chief trial judge on a three-judge panel; Burt Lancaster is defendant Ernst Janning, a legal scholar and an exterminator of lives; Marlene Dietrich is the widow of a German general who had been executed by the Allies; Maximilian Schell is Hans Rolfe, the German defense attorney who suggests that U.S. forces committed acts that were as bad as those of the Nazis. Producer-director Stanley Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann, adapting his "Playhouse 90" presentation from 1959, cook up an intense (if long-winded) verbal sparring match in the courtroom, and each of the actors is given a solo moment in the spotlight to sound off. While the material is certainly gripping, Kramer's presentation is so baleful and lumbering as to seem occasionally inert. This was the social message drama of its year, so naturally the Oscars came calling (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences loves prestige, and this anguished epic ups the ante by casting A-list actors in every key role). Nominated for 11 Academy Awards (winning two, for Schell as Best Actor and Mann for his writing), the picture served its purpose and brought a devastating chapter to light--but, in the end, it's a Hollywood light, and there's a smug, self-congratulatory air about the film that keeps it from being a truly emotional document. **1/2 from ****