Would Be Made Differently Today

Rating: 6/10 (14 February 2002)

There have been many, many court room films made since 1961, and each have made advances in pacing and tension. This is perhaps why "Judgment at Nuremberg"--though a good movie--feels achingly slow at times. It reminded me of the type of thing you'd see in an intro to law or ethics class as an undergraduate. The aged instructor would see it as a meaty source for generating class discussion, and the room of teenagers would find it duller than dirt.
What I liked about the movie, what I found to be its strength was it's attitude of fair play. Everyone in the film is allowed to gain sympathy from the audience because their motivations are given. Colonel Lawson is only self-righteous because he has witnessed first hand the horrors of the concentration camps. Hans Rolfe is ashamed of himself and of his countrymen for what was done during the war but trudges ahead with his defense of the judges because he hopes to give Germany some sense of dignity through the trial. And Ernst Janning did what he did during the war because he hoped to make a difference from within the system rather than resigning from it in protest. This easily could have been a film in which the triumphant Americans put the smug and arrogant Nazis in their place (maybe if it had been made ten or 15 years before it would have been), but instead it concentrates on very grey issues and the people behind them.