Reflections from watching "Judgement at Nuremberg" again

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2006)

The first reflection is a musical one, as I suddenly realize how Stanley Kramer liked to use hauntingly beautiful songs to enhance scenes. "Lili Marleen" is already itself a languid, melancholic song and the effect it has in "Nuremberg" is plain to see. Really ingenious however is the transformation of "Waltzing Matilda" into a dreamy a cappella background song that takes the dancing scene in "On the beach" (between Gregory Peck and Eva Gardner) to an emotional height.
On a more serious plane, it's uncanny how this movie, 45 years later, is still right on its mark about American occupation of foreign soil, as of today. Defense attorney Hans Rolfe's (Maximilian Schell) biggest challenge is not in convincing the tribunal that his client Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) is innocent, but in convincing the client himself. The arguments he put before the court were the best he could marshal under the circumstances: (a) his client was obligated to carry out the law existing in his country at the time, no matter how evil these laws were; (b) if his client, and also the German people, were guilty of condoning Hitler's rise to power, the rest of the world must also be guilty; (c) his client was not aware of the atrocities going on under the Nazi regime, so chillingly depicted by prosecuting attorney Col. Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark). None of these was very compelling but he did the best he could, as even Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) admitted.
Rolfe's biggest challenge was to convince Janning that it's up to them both to be the last defense of the dignity of the German people. Without that dignity, Germany could never be rebuilt. But it was Janning, after all, who had better insight and foresight, to be able to see that to uphold the dignity of the German people, he must honestly admit his guilt rather than deny it. Janning was of course right. It's the German leaders who have the courage to admit the Nazi crimes (even when they were not part of it) that enable the country to be raise its head high again, cleansed of atrocities committed by a minority of extremists.
The 4 key roles were superbly acted. I realize that it's quite meaningless but if I have to rank them, I would have to put Tracy first, followed by Widmark, Schell (even when he won the Oscar) and Lancaster. Not to be forgotten are the 3 marvelous actors in the supporting roles, played with no less excellence than the key roles  Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Cliff and Judy Garland (not in any particular order).