A review of the impressive and important 1961 film “Judgement At Nuremberg”
It was only after I had seen the 2025 “Nuremberg” that I finally viewed the 1961 “Judgement At Nuremberg”. While the first of these deals with the trial of the most senior of the Nazi war leaders by a four-power International Military Tribunal, the second film is a fictionalised depiction of one of the 12 trials – that concerning senior judges – conducted by the Americans alone.
In reality, there were 16 defendants at the trial but the film only features four, two of them based on real people – Franz Schlegelberger (1876-1970) and Oswald Rothaug (1897-1967) – and two of them amalgams of the others. The film is not an easy watch: it is almost three hours long, it is very heavy on dialogue, and it uses actual footage of the concentration camps. But it is an impressive and important work.
The script by Abby Mann and the direction by Stanley Kramer are outstanding and the cast is star-stunned. The four most prominent roles were filled by Spencer Tracy as the Chief Judge, Burt Lancaster as the prime defendant, Richard Widmark as the prosecuting lawyer and Maximilian Schell as the defending lawyer. Other well-known actors in supporting roles include Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Montgomery Cliff, and even William Shatner (before his “Star Trek” days).
Above all, this is a vital piece of cinema because of the hugely complex moral issues that it examines: how much guilt should be attributed to individuals at different levels of responsibility in an authoritarian regime? how much account should be taken of the wider economic and political environment in assessing guilt and administering punishment? who should make these judgements and when? The film presents conflicting arguments, often in powerful speeches.
The film received 12 Academy Award nominations and won two (Mann for Best Screenplay and Schell for Best Actor). In 2013, “Judgment At Nuremberg” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.