Kramer's Brilliant All-Star Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (16 May 2010)

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is a cinematic masterpiece that has everything: a brilliant, Oscar-winning script by Abby Mann, sure-footed direction by Stanley Kramer, astonishing camera work by Ernest Laszlo, and a heaven-sent ensemble of superb actors who breathe such life into their characters that it is hard to believe that this is not a factual account of the Nuremberg Trials, but a fictionalized story based on facts. Or to put it another way, the people in this film never really existed, but they damn well should have.
Briefly: Nuremberg, Germany, 1948. The Nuremberg Trials are nearing their end; the only defendants left are four German judges who served under the Nazi regime.
The broad range of acting styles is of particular interest here. Spencer Tracy brings his usual direct, no-nonsense approach to the role of the upright, soft-spoken New England judge in charge of the proceedings. Maximillian Schell makes an astonishing American debut as the defense attorney who feels it is his mission to defend not only his clients, but the entire German people. Schell's performance is pure dynamite; he won the Best Actor Oscar for his work here.
On the other side is Richard Widmark as the prosecutor, an Army Colonel who was present at the liberation of the camps and is so sick inside at what he saw that he would indeed like to convict the whole German people. Widmark brings a deep anger and sense of moral outrage to his character that plays brilliantly off of Schell's righteous indignation.
Marlene Dietrich, in what may be the most difficult role in the film, plays the widow of a Nazi general who was executed for war crimes; she tries to engage Tracy's character, to influence him to realize that, in her words, "we are not all monsters." Dietrich, in real life a passionate Nazi-hater, delivers one of her best performances in this film.
Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift have devastating cameos as victims of the defendants. Clift is a slow-witted man who was sterilized under the Nazis. Clift was quite ill at the time, and he uses his illness for all its worth; his performance is so agonizing it is hard to watch. Likewise Garland is equally brilliant as a broken woman, trying to rebuild her life after being accused under the Nazis of having an affair with an older, Jewish man (who was executed for the crime of "racial pollution"), who is forced to relive her memory of her ordeal on the witness stand in a tour-de-force performance that builds and builds until Garland breaks down, screaming at Schell, "STOP IT! STOP IT!!" and Burt Lancaster stands up and roars, "HERR ROLFE! Are we going to do this again?" Lancaster then delivers a long monologue that sums up everything that has gone before. Lancaster subdues his usual physicality here; his shoulders stoop, and his whole affect is one of dejection. His final speech on the witness stand would have brought the house down in a theatre.
Werner Klemperer is also on hand as one of Lancaster's fellow defendants, an unrepentant monster of a Nazi who stands firmly by everything he did. This is not Colonel Klink; be warned.
The rest of the ensemble is equally flawless; I did not see a single bad performance.
The other star of this film is Ernest Laszlo's camera. This film takes place mostly in the crowded courtroom of the Hall of Justice. The camera is fluid, always moving in, pulling back, panning the room, even moving over the backs of people's heads. It is the essence of great cinematography, and makes what could have been a static courtroom drama into an exciting cinematic event.
This is a long film at just over three hours, but there is not a frame of film wasted.