Anatomy of a Holocaust

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2017)

It took more than a decade for Hollywood to handle the most painful aspect of World War II, the most difficult to watch from a cinematic perspective: the Holocaust. George Stevens made "The Diary of Anne Frank" and Otto Preminger made "Exodus". Stanley Kramer adopts a different angle converging with the streak of courtroom dramas that started in the late 50's: "12 Angry Men", "Witness for the Prosecution", "Anatomy of a Muder" or "Inherit the Wind", actually you have a dozen of classics made between 1957 and 1962, and "Judgment at a Nuremberg" is one of the high points, dealing with the German perspective, it can be subtitled: "Anatomy of a Holocaust".
The film asks fundamental questions about the responsibility of German judges and prosecutors who sentenced to jail or sterilization, many civilians, out of obedience to the Third Reich regime. Set at the end of the Nuremberg trials in 1948, the film is a powerful documentary-like drama questioning the roles played by men who were not Nazi officers, who never pulled any trigger or activated any gas chamber, yet there's no doubt that their law-abiding attitude cautioned an evil ideology. And the real challenge is to ask ourselves a similar question: what would have we done, today, if we were to be ruled by a shamefully evil law, or at least, unethical.
A look at the context: by the time these trials were conducted, all the Nazi top-management was wiped out but while Germany was turning the page of World War II, some people still had to answer for their crimes. Stanley Kramer deals with the trauma of the war without adopting an inquisitive tone and that's worthy of appreciation, the performance of Maximilian Schell as the lawyer of the four judges is pivotal, because this is a man whose competence is undeniable and inspires tacit admiration and obvious concerns from the prosecutor played by Richard Widmarck. Spencer Tracy as Judge Haywood observes the trial with impassible eyes, and from his rugged Yankee look, you can tell this is a man who's really asking question and wants to be convinced.
The film is never as powerful as when you stop watching it from a collective aspect and see it from one individual perspective, one that makes things less black-and-white and more complex than they seem. Modern audiences are a few steps ahead of "Judgment at Nuremberg" but we can appreciate it as a serious drama full of passionately riveting exchanges especially between Schell and Widmarck who, in their own right, manage to have a point even if they stand for diverging opinions. And within a run-time of three-hour, a few other scenes emerge from the judicial routine. Montgomery Clift's awkwardness culminating with his broken voice confronting the impassible Haywood and asking if his mother was feeble-minded, Schell with the passiveness of a cold-blooded bully putting the final nail on his coffin by telling him that all he got is his word and facts can't speak for him.
Schell can be rather destructive and finally loses his temper with frail and plump Judy Garland portraying a former Jew's mistress, but the scene works less than Clift's because it is to melodramatic proportions. It is interesting though that Kramer picked Clift and Garland to play worn-out characters, at a time where their career was already declining, and they were broken souls to some degree, there are many artistic licenses taken by Kramer, his loose handling of 'languages' issue, some flashy zooming, all create a rather bizarre self-conscious aspect. Even Burt Lancaster, as accused judge Emil Janning, chooses a pose that gives him a strange solemnity and makes his character uncomfortably sympathetic, oddly enough, the opposite happens with Marlene Dietrich's character that seemed to exist to give Haywood some German insights from a civilian perspective.
It comes down to some banal scenes being brilliant, one in jail where a former Nazi camp worker explains it in the most casual way how gas chambers work. I love the fact that he's talking while he's still chewing as if the subject wasn't serious enough to speak with gravity. His casual tone made the point. And in the shot, you have the face of Werner Klemperer (known for Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes"), he plays a despicable Nazi judge but his face is devastated, either this is the Nazi realizing the extent of the horror, but you can also see the man who survived Nazism and stopped acting in character. In both cases, it was a brilliant moment.
"Judgment at Nuremberg" is a dense movie that questions the extents of responsibility, by confronting the Americans to similar issues, how can they condemn German people while avoiding diplomatic complication at the dawn of Cold War? Schell is also the voice that allows pointing a finger on the complicity of the Allies, the application of eugenic laws, the bombing of Hiroshima and many items of discussion suggesting that Germany doesn't have the monopoly of horror. Still, the film manages to find the powerful ending by mentioning that it's not a matter of logic but of fairness. Schell might be 'right' in the absolute, but there comes a time where you've got to think with your heart. Which takes me back to the opening point about the evilness of law.
I remember an interesting quote from "A Man for All Seasons": "This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!" The accused judges would have used this line as a defense; they did what they did for their own interest, because as legal scholars, they believed in law.
But if in the name of Law, you give the Devil the benefit of the law, what if the Devil is the law?