JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
***
There are better three-hour epics and far-better courtroom dramas than this (ANATOMY OF A MURDER and 12 ANGRY MONKEYS for starters), but JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is for the most part a compelling Nazi retrospective reenacting the Nuremberg Trials of 1948. The outcome is never in question, but the German defense attorney does a convincing job of introducing arguments that shed doubt on the guilt of the Nazi judges and lawyers put on trial. His line of argument is that they were merely following orders and weren't aware of the concentration camps, until German doctor Burt Lancaster's guilt brings on a climactic speech contradicting everything the defense attorney argued.
There are too many climactic speeches in the movie -- multiple climaxes, you might say. Besides stirring speeches from the head judge, both lawyers and Lancaster, there are also a couple tense scenes with witnesses on the stand. One was a forced sterilization victim whom the prosecutor argues was neutered because he was Jewish, but it's painfully (not as painful as a sterilization though) obvious that he was sterilized because of his mental incompetence. Another is a young woman whose elderly Jewish lover had been executed for suspected rape, but the defense attorney breaks her down by yelling over and over the question, "DID YOU SIT ON HIS LAP?!"
Nobody knows why this would break a person's defenses down, but it does. It's also better not to ask why everyone in Germany is speaking English, even though the first ten minutes in the courtroom have interpreters relaying the questions back and forth between the Americans and Germans. Then, midway through the defense attorney's opening remarks, he switches to English, as do the other Germans. Hell, even the sterilized idiot speaks perfect English. He can't remember Hitler's birthday but he can remember vocabulary words and dozens of complex verb forms.
JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is at its best when it milks Nazi inhumanity for emotion, particularly during the showing of a newsreel of atrocities, but it starts to become incredibly tedious after the 150-minute mark. By the three hour mark it seems longer than World War II itself. Part of the blame lies in the lengthy speeches but most of it is in the needless out-of-the-courtroom scenes which show the judge and his assistant (a young, pre- hairpiece William Shatner) out on the town with old German sexpot (Marlene Dietrich) who wants to convince the judge that not all Germans are monsters. SCHINDLER'S LIST it ain't, but it still makes for an overwhelmingly positive viewing experience.
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