| |  | Director: Stanley Kramer
Actors: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
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Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 33012
Format: Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Media: VHS Tape
Running Time: 186 Minutes
UPC: 027616153630
EAN: 0027616153630
ASIN: B00000FZ8B
Theatrical Release Date: December 19, 1961
Release Date: December 15, 1992
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Showing reviews 6-10 of 84
 Anti-American Propoganda from Stanley Kramer February 26, 2005
Albert Lee (Denver, CO)
19 out of 111 found this review helpful
Stanley Kramer was an Anti-American liberal member of the
hollywood elite. In this film he uses America's victory
over the Nazi menace and its liberation of Europe as an
excuse to bash America more than the Nazis.
He salts the film with Anti-America references and reverses
history at the end of the film to make it look like America
freed all the nazis from prison. And guess what? Kramer tells
us through his propoganda that it was our life-struggle for
Freedom against the soviet union that made us into criminals.
Its a wonder the man didn't move to the soviet union he loved
it so much. Its a well made film and some of the actors give
better performances than the film deserves, but its Anti-American
script and direction work against those great performances.
There is also a clear plea made in the film for Warren-Court
style judicial activism on the part of judges. Kramer is
making a liberal argument in favor of Judges legislating from
the courtroom. But that wasn't the problem in Nazi Germany.
The problem in Nazi Germany was that these judges were evil
men working for a fear government. Their holding office in
the Nazi government should have been sufficient grounds for
prison terms. The trial for these judges should have lasted
about five minutes. Did you hold office in the nazi government?
Yes - automatic seven years. Did you convict anyone under the
following laws - If yes, one more year for each person he
convicted. Were you a party member? If yes, five more years.
The trials for these men should have been about ten easy
questions. Going into why they made decisions under a particular
law is irrelivant to the crimes that they are guilty of. If
they held office, if they applied criminal laws, if they were
party members, then they are guilty.
And the nazi lawyer should have been thrown out of court for
acting like that. No American judge at Nuremberg would ever
have allowed a nazi to abuse witnesses like he did.
 Big arguments galore... November 27, 2004
R. Gawlitta (Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA)
15 out of 23 found this review helpful
1961 was a year of brilliant films. "West Side Story" won most of the Oscars. Also, "The Hustler" with Paul Newman was riveting human drama; "The Guns of Navarone" was a taut WW II thriller that never failed to entertain. Another nominee was "Fanny", a light sweet film which was only a tribute to the great Charles Boyer. The last Best Picture nominee, "Judgment at Nuremberg", was in a class of it's own, a screenplay by Abby Mann and directed by the most maverick Stanley Kramer. Kramer used Spencer Tracy often, and for good reason. Tracy centers this film. Kramer has never shied away from any subject that might make people uncomfortable, whether "Inherit the Wind" or "The Defiant Ones", or, later, "Ship of Fools". He attracts the best actors and has directed many to acting nominations; he also knew how to use a large cast to good advantage (much like our present-day maverick, Robert Altman). Maximillian Schell was auspicious as the defense attorney and won the Oscar (over Tracy, also nominated). Abby Mann's screenplay also won. Schell is, indeed, brilliant; also nominated was Montgomery Clift as the feeble-minded guy (not a stretch, since word has it he was drunk the whole time); the real treat is a sublime and courageous performance by Judy Garland, which will break your heart. I'm also glad that Kramer asked Marlene Dietrich to appear. Aside from her natural beauty, no one seems to remember her wonderful performances in "Morocco", "Golden Earrings" or Hitchcock's "Stage Fright". Here, she's confident and sure, as always. This is a powerful film, as I would expect from Stanley Kramer. Though the names have all been changed, we cannot forget the brutality of the situations involved. We've come a long way, baby...but let's never forget.
 NOT ANAMORPHIC BUT BETTER THAN AVERAGE August 19, 2004
Nix Pix (Windsor, Ontario, Canada)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
"Judgment at Nuremberg" is Stanley Kramer's often stagy, often stoic, though never anything less than completely engrossing, post-WWII melodrama. It's high octane film making driven by star performances and masterfully scripted dialogue; a vital, tragic, yet overall life affirming message picture about the difference between abiding the law and doing what is just in an unjust world. The film stars Spencer Tracy as the honorable American Judge Dan Haywood, assigned to supervise the trial of four German justices, including Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) who have been accused of sending innocent men to their brutal deaths in Nazi concentration camps. Put up in the home of a former high ranking Nazi official, Haywood gains personal insight into the aftermath of Germany's political climate through his engagement of the servants (Ben Wright and Virginia Christine) and through a chance meeting with their former mistress, Madame Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich). But the real spark of this film is to be found in the mutual bitterness between passionate Defense Attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) and the pronouncedly defiant Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark), who serves as lead prosecutor. In a cameo appearance Judy Garland is remarkably heartbreaking as Irene Hoffman, a middle-aged frump whose fatherly relationship with a Jewish gentleman resulting in his death. Nominated for an astounding 11 Academy Awards, and winner of 2, "Judgment at Nuremberg" remains a benchmark of 60s cinema - a powerful and emotionally satisfying film for the ages.
Although MGM's DVD is NOT anamorphically enhanced, it delivers a very smooth image that will surely not disappoint. The B&W picture is remarkably clean, with minimal film grain, accurately rendered contrast levels, deep solid blacks and very clean whites. The audio has been remixed to 5.1 (the original mono is also included). The two are practically identical in their spatial separation and fidelity, though in the 5.1 mix the music track is decidedly the benefactor. Extras include a 20 minute thoroughly insightful featurette in which screenwriter Abby Mann and co-star Maximilian Schell speak of their experiences on the film. Both are so well spoken and frank that they put many a new audio commentary track to shame with their genuine ability to talk on cue. Also included is a 15 minute tribute to Stanley Kramer that is very nicely done, if all too brief. A photo gallery, theatrical trailer and promotional junket materials round out the extras.
"FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY" October 29, 2004
Scamp Lumm (Perseus-Pisces cluster, ~100Mpc)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Fascism is defined in the American Heritage dictionary as "a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Burt Lancaster's character, Ernst Janning, explains in his defense that the people of Germany remained silent "for love of country", and many other of their actions were motivated by that highest regard of theirs for their country. They remained silent when their neighbors disappeared at night, when innocent people were denied their rights etc. under the Nazi's administrations. The Nuremberg trials were held over a period of four years; there were thirteen different trials in all. This movie is based on the third military tribunal which tried judges and other legislative officials who sentenced people to death, deportation, or prison because of violation of laws enacted by the Nazis. The script was written by Abby Mann who won an Oscar for Best Writing; Maximilian Schell won an Oscar for Best Actor in a leading role. The Austrian born actor had worked with Clift before in Young Lions which also featured Marlon Brando. Most of the characters in the movie are fictional, though some, Judy Garland's role and Burt Lancaster's, were based on actual persons, yet the names were changed. I highly recommend that this movie be seen and that web sites on the subject be looked at, in that there is so much material to those trials that this 3 hour long movie couldn't contain. The trials were unique in many ways. The framework for these trials was suggested as early as September of 1944 by a Colonel in the U.S. War Department. Nuremberg was where the Nazis held their war rallies and where the Nuremberg Laws regarding citizenship and race were enacted in 1935 and was the chosen site for the 13 trials; the Justice Case, which this movie is based on, was governed by Military Tribunal III in 1947.
The acting is superb in this movie; I, personally, thought Judy Garland's was the most stellar, was moved to tears by her defense of herself accused of having a physical relationship with a non-Aryan, in her case, a jew, in violation of the Nuremberg Laws. The filming is very effective too; this 1961 movie was filmed in black and white which is fitting given the mood and atmosphere of the setting; Nuremberg was in ruins, 90% of its buildings had been destroyed, and the mood of its citizens in the war's aftermath and looming trial dark indeed.
I think this film, more than its 2000 counterpart, best reveals the sentiments of the Germans post war, mainly through Judge Haywood's (Spencer Tracy) interactions with Germans he came in contact with, for example, the servants of the innkeeper who housed him during the trial. Also, the feelings of the Germans were also effectively expressed by Lancaster's character and Schell's during the trial. Judge Haywood is fair minded and commends Mr. Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), the defense attorney for the 16 Nazi defendants, for his logical skills, agreeing with some of the things he said. Yet, he then goes on to say that in consideration of the crimes "to be logical is not to be right." In meeting with Ernst Janning at the trial's end, Judge Haywood accepts the gift of Janning's court papers, yet is not swayed by the logic that Janning had no idea that millions of people had been killed the way they had been. Judge Haywood replies, "it came to that the first time you sentenced to death a man you knew to be innocent". Hans Rolfe (Schell) stated that the blame for the crimes should be shared by everyone all over the world who supported Hitler financially, materially, or spiritually, for example, the Vatican, American industrialists, and others who shared Hitler's ideology. Yet, historically, German military officers condoned the Armenian genocide of WWI and as early as 1903, funded by the Deutsche Bank, were working on completing a railway going from Baghdad to Berlin, see Sander's The High Walls of Jerusalem.
The footage shown during the trial of concentration camp atrocities was the actual film shown on November 29, 1945 in the first trial which is the subject matter for Nuremberg, the film of 2000. The list is too long to mention the many ways the Nazis terrorized their own citizens; the other testimony in this trial was of Mr. Petersen (Monty Clift) who is sterilized because the Nazis, in their Spartan approach to citizenship, would sterilize the mentally infirm, disabled, or non-Aryan, in order to obtain a pure race. (Violence against homosexuals in Nazi Germany began on June 30, 1934 when a military officer, Ernst Rohm, an SA chief of staff, was murdered by Himmler and Goring, an event nicknamed "the night of the long knives"; Clift had only one male partner all his life, so his role was fitting in that gays under Hitler were undoubtably similarly abused).
Of the 16 men tried, 10 were found guilty, 4 were acquitted. The other 2 were seriously ill, one dying before the verdict. My favorite statement of Judge Haywood, at the trial's end, was that the decisions were a result of "what we (the tribunal) stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single individual". This movie is a MUST SEE.
"Judgment' both great acting and great history!!! December 5, 2005
V. Knutsen (St. John, IN United States)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
History films and dramatic films come and go. Rarely is a film good at both drama and historic fidelity.
Note that "Judgment at Nuremburg" is cited in one of the Nuremburg trials online websites. Why? The lightly fictionalized trial of the middle management judges (disguised, no doubt, to protect the guilty) portrays well the main point and historians have noticed!!!
Justice (and the judges) became whatever Hitler wanted them to be. Then the Nazis lost and the Allies judged the leaders, including the "middle management" justices...persons who should have known better than to let Hitler seduce them into perpetrating injustice against other humans.
burt Lancaster (as the most famous judge on trial) has a fabulous speech about the Nazi Judges!
And watch young Maximilian Schell portray the intelligent but essentially still morally warped defense counsel. He deservedly got an Oscar (tm) because you feel sorry for him yet angry at him--at the same time.
The best casting is in two witnesses. Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland---both who were not many years off from their life's end. Their attractive yet somewhat ravaged faces and demeanor help them portray two other large (but mostly forgotten) victim groups...the disabled or maybe mentally slow (Clift) and those "aryans" (Garland) who just possibly had a romantic encounter with Jews.
No this film is not a super action movie. But your teen should watch it with you...And Judgment resonates today as we receive much power to manipulate the genetics of the future generation.
Will we do what the Nazis (in their genetic courts) did and sterilize the "unfit" as was done to Clift's character in this movie? This was the Nazi's first (and forgotten) holocaust...where they sharpened their mass murdering skills before they turned them fullforce on the Jews & other non0Aryans.
I watched this DVD again when the Terri Schiavo case was going on. If you research "Nazi Eugenics' online, be prepared for a shocker. In some parts of the US and the world, we are starting up the same old bad eugenics stuff the Nazis used!!! Don't believe me. Research for yourself!!!
*****
Again, good and great movies not only are good drama, but if they porport to be historical and actually stand up to years of scholarly scrutiny, then you are DOUBLE blessed when you buy their DVD!!!
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