Preachy but effective, with many great performances

Rating: Null/10 (30 April 2000)

I did not find Spencer Tracy to be self-righteous, as others did. He was just... well, Spencer Tracy as judge, and fine, I thought. The self-righteous character in this movie, for me, was Richard Widmark's prosecutor. Maybe it was because he had the easy job, (How hard was it going to be to convince everyone that these Nazi war criminals should be convicted?) but he was just too preachy for me. I really couldn't stand him. Apparently all Stanley Kramer dramas have some amount of preachiness to them, and it's there in here, all right. But there are still great performances from Tracy, Burt Lancaster as one of the defendants, Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland as two of the witnesses, and Marlene Dietrich as a German woman who tries to convince Tracy "that we're not all monsters." As for Maximillian Schell, who plays the German lawyer defending the criminals and won the film's only acting Oscar, he's pretty good, too, but doesn't particularly stand out among such a great cast. Yes, the film is overlong and has a few draggy, boring spots, but is also has several effective scenes, such as several testimonies of the witnesses and the scene showing (most of) the greusome details of the Holocaust. That really does get to you, even with Widmark narrating.