One of the best courtroom dramas I have ever seen

Rating: 10/10 (22 June 2015)

Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg is the most riveting historical period drama I have ever seen since seeing Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) but both films have two things common besides being historical dramas, they were both fictionalized, and both have great ensemble casts with JFK featuring Kevin Costner, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland, Joe Pesci, Gary Oldman, John Candy, Laurie Metcalf, Michael Rooker, and Tommy Lee Jones. As well as this film featuring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Maximilian Schell, and Montgomery Clift all in superb performances. The film is loosely based on the 1948 Nuremberg trials which originally had 99 defendants but with this film only having four of five, the movie stars Spencer Tracy as Chief Judge Dan Haywood who presides on the case against the defendants Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster), Emil Hahn (played by Werner Klemperer), Friedrich Hofstetter (played by Martin Brandt),and Werner Lampe (played by Torben Meyer). Abby Mann's very suspenseful screenplay is also a very intense one because we don't know whether the four defendants will be found guilty or not because of the reasons that the prosecution and the defense bring to the table all because of the rivaling performances from Richard Widmark (who played prosecutor Tad Lawso)n and Maximilian Schell (who played the defense attorney Hans Rolfe and ended up winning an Oscar for his performance), this is Kramer's absolute best film as a director and also one of 1961's 10 best films.