This Is What They Call The Banality of Evil

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2010)

What could I possibly say in this meek review that does any justice to this amazing movie? Let's consider the cast to begin with: Spency Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich. When was so much talent together in a single movie? Then there's the enormity of the plot: a movie about the Nuremberg trials of Nazis involved in war crimes. It's a testament to Stanely Kramer and Abby Mann that this movie rather than being a simple condemnation of evil by a victorious country over a conquered country, is a complex, challenging analysis of morality, responsibility, duty, and patriotism. In fact the movie is downright cynical in its presentation of justice.
This marvelous courtroom drama follows Hans Rolfe (Schell) as the defense lawyer of four judges charged with collaborating with the Nazi regime in the perversion of justice for political reasons. Rolfe puts up an amazing defense, one that pulls no punches. As wonderfully as Schell plays him, there's something repulsive about Rolfe in his use of logic for saving his clients. One watches him in awe, wondering whether the passion he exhibits is genuine or not.
His opponent is Colonel Tad Lawson, a man who witnessed the atrocities of the concentration camps and is personally committed to having the four judges sentenced. Richard Widmark plays him like a man possessed, driven by the horrors he witnessed and disgusted with the idea that they may yet walk free. The acme of his performance is when he describes a movie shown in court, depicting the horrors inside a concentration camp. His chilling voice is so filled with anger and sorrow, one believes Widmark was really there.
Of the four defendants stands out Ernst Janning. Burt Lancaster plays him with restraint, in fact he barely speaks in the whole movie until he breaks it in one of the most dramatic moments of the movie and then gives one of the best speeches in the entire movie. For the most part he plays his role with his eyes, expressive and full of pain and remorse. How he (and Widmark) missed an Oscar nomination is beyond me.
Spencer Tracy was nominated for Best Leading Actor, eventually losing to Schell for his passionate performance. Tracy doesn't seem to do much but that's his role as Judge Haywood; he's a mediator, the voice of reason and order when Rolfe and Lawson go over the top. His role is to show restraint, up until the end of the movie when he has to give out the sentence. Then he outperforms everyone in the movie.
Great supporting actors waltz through this movie and leave amazing performances too. Two that can't be forgotten are by Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen Clift in a movie before, but the few minutes he was in this movie held me in thrall. I was in awe of the way he used his voice, hands and whole body to show the psychological marks left on his character, an innocent German who was sterilized on grounds of being mentally retarded.
Judy Garland, whom I knew only from The Wizard of Oz, plays Irene Hoffman, a woman who in her adolescence becomes indirectly responsible for the Nazis killing a Jewish man she had befriended. Her testimony and confrontation with Rolfe mark one of the high points of the movie.
In fact I'd say this three-hour-long movie is one long series of high points. There were so many amazing moments in the movie I pretty much lost count. It makes a good case of questioning the role ordinary Germans had in the Nazi atrocities, but also shows how easy it was to sympathies with an ideology that promised to save a country in ruins. More importantly, it's a chilling portrayal of what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil - Eichmann, the subject of her book is ever mentioned in the a disturbing scene in which a man in charge of a concentration camp explains in a very casual way how easy it was to burn thousands of victims in ovens. As Judge Haywood says, what makes the four men on trial special is that they weren't maniacs or sadists, but ordinary men. This movie was quite ahead of its time, when we think that Hollywood is always criticized for making simple good vs. evil stories. What makes this movie so incredible is that the defendants weren't evil, they were just people doing their job. Even today some movies would be afraid of being so honest.
So Stanley Kramer and Abby Mann not only deserve credit for having made a superb movie, perfect in pretty much all its aspects, but also for making one of the most interesting studies of the nature of evil in the history of cinema.