The legacy of war

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2017)

With a star studded cast and a very long running time, this is a philosophical but fictionalised account of the Nuremberg trials inspired by true events.
Once the more infamous Nazis have been tried and prosecuted, it is the turn for the more lesser known suspects. Spencer Tracy as lead Judge Dan Haywood presides over the trial of four judges who have been charged with war crimes as they implemented the laws of the Nazi regime. These include enforcing laws of racial purity and sterilising undesirables such as the feeble minded.
Burt Lancaster plays a renowned jurist Ernst Janning whose activities baffle Dan Haywood as his work on the law is so well respected.
In the background of rising tensions between the Americans and the Russians with the developing Cold War, there is a ferocious courtroom battle between prosecuting attorney, Colonel Lawson (Richard Widmark) and Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) who relentlessly badger the witnesses.
Lawson who liberated one of the concentration camps holds the entire nation responsible for the atrocities, yet his own actions at the courtroom are cynical. Rolfe is more pragmatic about any other nation trying to claim a moral high ground. As he tells Janning, the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb in Hiroshima that killed countless women and children.
Judge Haywood tries to understand himself about the German people during the war, he mingles with locals and gets to know a widow, Frau Bertholt played by Marlene Dietrich. Her own husband was executed by the Nuremberg trials but she insists that many Germans had no idea about the holocaust. However Haywood is troubled about the Nazi atrocities, those who were enablers and other who turned a blind eye to it.
Director Stanley Kramer keeps this long film enthralling, some of the court cases are vignettes allowing actors such as Montgomery Cliff and Judy Garland to give short memorable performances.
Maximilian Schell gets the more emotional role as the defence lawyer and at times he gets to chew the scenery but he also won a best actor Oscar. Burt Lancaster is more restrained as Janning, he hardly speaks for most of the film but his face is solemn and stern. A man who has realised he did wrong by condemning some of his own people to death and now has to pay the price for just following orders.