Judge Not ...

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2009)

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this film is the note that appears at the end stating that of all the 99 people convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at the trials, which ended in 1949, none was still in prison. The film was made in 1961, a scant twelve years after the trials. Okay, as someone has pointed out, one of the 99, Rudolf Hess, did remain in prison but even so we are faced with the question why hold the trials at all if, as it turned out, they were largely meaningless. Bleeding-Heart Liberal Extraordinary to the House of Sunset and Vine Stanley Kramer was the ideal, if indeed the only person to send celluloid messages to the world as he had demonstrated time and again and here he sends a doozy. This is a Great film from whatever angle you like beginning with a fine script by Abby Mann (and an uncredited Monty Clift), equally fine direction from Kramer, the whole crowned by excellent ensemble playing with two Beyond Outstanding performances from Monty Clift and Judy Garland that lift screen acting to another dimension. It's perhaps just as well that these were cameos because it's hard to believe either could have sustained such a level of intensity over the long haul. It's always the mark of a great film when 1) the time flies by and 2) you don't want it to end and here the two hours fifty nine minutes are up and away in a trice. For an essentially downbeat subject with virtually no light relief but just enough non-courtroom footage to leaven the trial itself the film keeps you both watching and involved and it's hard to praise anything more than that.