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JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG FADING In a word, lugubrious. The subject matter requires solemnity, but why is it so many of us wish Mel Brooks offered to provide some levity? Probably because director Stanley Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann drape themselves in blackened self-righteousness; they’re steep in serious gloom, with such sincere rectitude it’s got to be patented. They turn horror stories of the living dead—Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland—into Oscar-nominated showcases of His & Hers psychoneurotics. Considering the period during which the 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg came out, and some years before Zyclon B TV movies and miniseries became suitable “entertainment,” there really wasn’t anywhere else to go judgmental and weepy but in the courtroom. Yet Kramer’s ultimate doomer On the Beach had some sly lightness in the midst of mankind’s demise, there’s humor in his racial drama Defiant Ones, and a few sharp cackles over Darwinism in Inherit the Wind. The Kramer/Mann reticence here is also a bow to pressures for persistent ethnic vigilance; they believed, in mounting a prestige lecture to “never forget,” the price of admission barred diversion. (The warning has since gone topsy-turvy: Israel’s Netanyahoo is using long-familiar tactics mocking the vow.) With huge names like Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich (wearing her famous gold facelift choker), oddly cranial Clift and chubby Garland, a leading performance by an actor little-known to American movie audiences can seem like fresh air—and we need a lot—so Maximilian Schell as the German attorney defending his complicit countrymen became the movie’s most acclaimed feature. He played the same part in Mann’s TV version for Playhouise 90—live—a few years before; in 2001, he’d do a Broadway version playing Lancaster’s role as pestiferous judge. It’s more than a little unnerving he won an Oscar as well as the N.Y. Critics award as best actor for his accent, healthy good looks and his character’s mostly unrebutted oratory. Insiders insist the win had more to do with Schell’s personal vehemence against Nazism and sister Maria being highly regarded in the Hollywood community. I liked Widmark, for no other reason than Stanley Kauffman’s dislike—that he “continues to savage his roles like a half-starved bloodhound,” though Schell’s bawling is often more rabid. (Could the 1956 The Last Wagon and the 1959 Warlock be the few times Widmark underacts?) The local servants played by reliaby creepy Virginia Christine and Ben Wright are subservience of the most loathsome kind. The real Holocaust footage used during the trial had been viewed previously in documentaries but not yet integrated into a major Hollywood movie; while powerful, the clips and Widmark’s lame narration don’t match the indescribable to be seen in color footage Eisenhower demanded be filmed, some of it by George Stevens, as a recorded history because he knew many would deny the reality. (He was right, as fascists world-wide and American Nazis are again on the rise; all they need is Ernest Gold’s disquieting selections of German nationalism from his J at N score to set them marching.) During their next go at the Nazis, in the 1962 film version of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play The Condemned of Altona, Mann reportedly wrote the following line for Schell as a Benzedrine-addicted Nazi torturer hiding in his father’s attic for 15 years: “When I see a Mercedes-Benz, I smell the stench of the gas ovens.” Sounds like Mel stopped by Mann’s office to offer one of his zingers. In Spherical. (Opening 5/23/1962 at the Cinetsage, running 11 weeks.) Oscar wins: best actor (Schell), best adapted screenplay. Oscar nominations: best picture, best director, best actor (Tracy), best supporting actor (Clift), best supporting actress (Garland), best b & w cinematography, art/set decoration, costumes (Jean Louis!) and film editing. ROLL OVER IMAGE
Text COPYRIGHT © 2002 RALPH BENNER (Revised 7/2023) All Rights Reserved. |
