Judgment at Nuremberg

(Stanley Kramer, US 1961, 186 min., 35mm)

Courtroom Dramas. Stanley Kramer’s cinema of social consciousness turns its focus to the cause and effects of fascism. Kramer fictionalizes the Judges’ Trial of 1947, in which German judges and prosecutors were brought in front of a military tribunal for war crimes against their own country. Spencer Tracy leads an all-star cast as the Chief Trial Judge on a panel of three as he hears testimony and conducts his own investigation into how these actions could have taken place in a modern society. Among the cast, Maximilian Schell won the Academy Award for Best Actor; Tracy, Montgomery Clift, and Judy Garland received nominations; and Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, and Richard Widmark turned in great (if less lauded) performances.

Special introduction by Joan Shelley Rubin, Dexter Perkins Professor, Department of History, Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center, University of Rochester.