Rating: 
Summary: AN EXTRAORDINARY MOVIE EXPERIENCE
Review: "Judgment at Nuremberg" earns merit as one of the finest dramas ever made on many levels: it is an honest, no-punches-pulled look at one of the most horrifying and avoided periods of the twentieth century, and it is unfolded by a brilliant director who heads a stellar cast. It is an intense, probing, and ultimately involving picture that casts a deep impression in the memory.At the beginning of the infamous Nuremberg trials in 1948, Judge Dan Heywood (Spencer Tracy) is called to preside over the tribunal that will determine the fates of several German judges cited for unforgivable crimes committed during World War II. The somewhat cynical, sardonic Heywood approaches the case at the beginning of the trials feeling no emotional connection to the events that happened or the men on trial. But through his acquaintances with liberal prosecutor Ted Lawson (Richard Widmark) and particularly the elegant Madame Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), the events that haunt the city of Nuremberg come to haunt him as he suddenly finds himself drawn deeper into the heart of the crimes as he never was before. In the courtroom, he is faced with the beleagured, repenting judge Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) and the passionate, fiery defense attorney Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell, in an Academy-Award winning performance), who relentlessly tortures two individuals on the witness stand: Rudolph Petersen (Montgomery Clift), a Jew who was illegally sterilized in a concentration camp hospital, and Irene Hoffman (Judy Garland), a Jew who was wrongfully persecuted for having affiliations with an elderly Jew. These scenes are particularly disturbing, for the realism in the actors' performances is very unnerving: Clift as Petersen tries desperately to prove to Rolfe that his mother was not mentally ill, and particularly Garland, whose emotions flood out as Rolfe pursues her to a breakdown, she eventually shrieking and shaking the witness stand. Also extremely disturbing are actual film reels taken from German concentration camps after the Holocaust, showing the grotesque, unimaginable fates that brought many Jews to their deaths. Struggling with justice and his own fervent passions, Heywood must now make the decisions that could forever change the course of history... This film, nominated for ten 1961 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor (Tracy), Supporting Actor (Clift), Supporting Actress (Garland), Director (Stanley Kramer)... won two, for Schell, for Best Actor, and for Abby Mann's brilliant screenplay. The dark truths of one of the darkest periods in history are finally uncovered in this riveting, intense drama that leaves its viewers stunned, and thinking... and trying to understand... why did it happen? It's a question that can never be answered, but this film asks all the right questions, so we are left to think about them... and never forget.
Rating:
Summary: After 50 years as cinema-lover, one of my 10 favorites
Review: Almost 40 years ago, I saw "Judgement", and was touched by its flawless, seamless movement, the strength of all its players (the industry's hallmarks), and the driving force of its rivoting historical significance. A milestone motion picture, that should be companioned with Schindler's List.
Rating: 
Summary: strong but a little clumsy
Review: As a whole this film is impressive and important, but I think over all owing his tremendous dramatic power of the trial of the Nazi judges and the superb actors and interpretations, and also for the times in what the action happens -the beginning of Cold War- that procures a difficult and rarified ambiance and the insuperable wish of forget all, bury the crimes and not remember nothing by the German people.
However I find the making of this film have some rough, bad resolute details, as the representation of the speech English- German, the use of the microphones which are some confuse, awkward and other details not very well solved. A better filmmaker would have done a more polished and still better movie.
Rating:
Summary: UNFORGETTABLE
Review: As compelling and important as this movie is as a piece of filmmaking and of history, for me, the rare treat here are a handful of unusual performances by stars we have seen before. Maximillian Schell is simply dazzling as the prosecutor, and deserved the Oscar; Judy Garland will blow you away with a performance, complete with accent, that is unlike anything you have ever seen from her before, and Marlene Dietrich is exceptional in her key moments on screen. While the parade of faces continues throughout this lengthy and absorbing movie, it is these three that pushed it from four stars to five for me.
Rating:
Summary: Judgment at Nuremberg
Review: Excellent. One of the finest courtroom dramas ever to be depicted on film.
Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Movie
Review: I have only seen this movie once, and I only wish to see it once. It is a terrific, terrific movie--one of the most unflinching and riviting movies I have ever seen. But it is a very difficult movie to watch. Once is enough; I feel as though I have been run through a ringer. Three small things bother me: First, Stanley Kramer's directing is often times stunning, startlingly so. But in a few very prominent cases it is distracting, especially during the 360 degree courtroom shots. Second, the script has an annoying habit of tying scenes together with visual puns. For instance, there is a scene in which Marlene Dietrich begins to pour a cup of coffee which quickly cuts to another scene where a fellow finishes pouring his cup of coffee. I find this habit odd and unnecessary. This is a serious work of art--and a highly successful work of art. It does not benefit much at all from such pointless cleverness: the subject matter does not call for bludgening the viewer with visual puns. Third, I cannot stand William Shatner's performance. It is hollow and unconvincing. This is a small matter, however, in light of the rest of the movie. Aside from these really quite small objections--annoyances, really--I found the movie to be practically irreproachable. It is a film everyone ought to see: an amazing achievement as an artwork and also as a document. It handles the complexities of these trials, and the confused emotional atmosphere that went with them, to incredible vicarious affect. I recommend this movie without significant reservation to absolutely anyone--we all must consider the questions that this movie raises if we are ever really to move beyond the twentieth century.
Rating:
Summary: Judgement at Nerumberg on Trial
Review: I think this is an important film and I would very much like to see it come out on DVD. I think it is important because it brings the Holocaust down to human terms. It profiles two people who were victims of the slaughter as well as those who purpatrated it. I have watched it many times and never fail to see something new and provacative in its retelling. And I am always stunned by its final remarks, as Burt Lancaster calls Spencer Tracey into his cell and says, I never thought it would come to this. Spencer Tracey replies, the first time you convicted an innocent person you knew it would come to this. Chilling.
Rating: 
Summary: Self Important: But with saving graces
Review: It appears there is an almost universal five-star rating for this film among Amazon reviewers. It is of course an important film. But it is also a self-important film. Its interminable running time of 186 minutes can be excruciating. Its release in 1961 came a year before Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann was executed and the year after Preminger's "Exodus", so the film perhaps provided essential insight into wartime criminal responsibility, an issue obviously still with us. But to say that it today delivers its intended wallop is just not so -- it is too flawed artistically. First, Kramer's direction is obvious and plodding. The cinematography & editing provide long pans and zooms in courtrooms, long looks of knowing reactions, long silences, good Germans singing long lieder ("Germans love to sing" says Dietrich) and long-winded observations by folks about everything from autobahns to death camps. In short, everything's too long! Second, the writing makes you squirm -- I challenge anyone to name a major feature with as many repeated lines. Writer Mann apparently imagined that for this film repititions of superficial thoughts added up to deep ones. Third, the acting is surprisingly wooden, given the talent. Lancaster as a Nazi Justice Minister alternately blusters and conducts soul searches; Garland as a 'collateral damage' racial victim gives an unusually unconvincing performance, for her; Dietrich's appearance as a Nazi widow is stiff and also odd, given her real-life staunch opposition to Nazism; Widmark as the prosecutor is just tiresome. Oscar-winner Schell as the defense attorney, allowed by Kramer to continuously yell in the court scenes, is full of sound and fury signifying practically nothing. Tracey as the head judge is a brighter light, but still mostly sleep-walks except for two sterling scenes --first, as he announces the court's decision eloquently from the bench and second at the end of the film (which I won't give away for anyone who hasn't seen it). The first major saving grace is the deeply moving performance of Montgomery Clift on the stand - the best piece in the entire 3 hours. His singular portrayal speaks more of horror and responsibility than everything else in the entire movie. The other saving grace is the historical events it, unfortunately, rather ineptly presents. (For my background see: ahlynde under People).
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, rapid intellectual pace, intricate construction
Review: It is time for this and other movies by Stanley Kramer (Inherit the Wind, On the Beach, Ship of Fools) to be released on DVD and to receive the full attention they deserve. Kramer had a talent that is all too rare in the movie industry: the ability to portray moral and ethical conflict in a way that is compelling, intelligent, satirical, and not always pretty. His greatest artistic achievement is to challenge the viewer to re-evaluate what it means to be a human being. Although the character Spencer Tracey portrays is (fortunately) more prone to question rather than admonish, the way in which his final words in the movie slash through the philosophical knotwork is nothing less than astonishing.
Rating:
Summary: They don't make films like that any more..
Review: It's been years since I saw this film, but much of it is still vivid in my mind.
The theme of the film is the impact of grand political ideas on ordinary people. We see the initial, instinctive isolationism of the American trial judge; the impact of war on an old, aristocratic military family in Germany; the patriotism of the Nazi-abhorring German defence counsel, who sees a 'not guilty' verdict as a victory for Germany's struggle to regain its self-respect; and the character of Ernst Janning, the incorruptible judge who saw the world around him go mad.
So how do you navigate your way through a moral maze when the old ideas of right and wrong have been turned on their head? This is not just a question for post-war Germany and Japan, or for post-communist eastern Europe, or for Muslims who try to reconcile their religion with the essentially anti-religious philosophy of Europe and North America: it is a question for all of us.
There is no easy answer. If we ignore our consciences and go along with the crowd, we can end up committing monstrous crimes; if we ignore the crowd and keep ourselves pure, we contribute to the atomisation of society and the breakdown of any form of common culture.
The only real way out is to involve ourselves in the way our societies are run, and argue our case in the marketplace of ideas.
Heavy stuff. It is a tribute to Kramer and his actors that they could inspire such thinking in a mainstream, Hollywood film.
This is a film you'll remember for the rest of your life.
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