Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

A reminder of how bad an actor Burt Lancaster could be?

Judy was ROBBED!

Didn't I read somewhere that Lancaster was a late substitute for Olivier, who couldn't do the movie for some reason?

This was the film that the infamous British "Moors Murderers" Ian Brady and Myra Hindley saw on their first date.

Monty and Judy in the same movie -- gay icon overload!

Love dat Monty Meltdown.

It’s a good movie. Sort of hits you over the head with a hammer. But that’s typical Stanley Kramer.

Should be seen in a double bill with Kramer’s other piece about Cynical-Nazis-Going-Straight-to-Hell, “Ship of Fools.”

That way you get Before and After.

The finest film ever, I think. It slips into melodrama, but it has serious things to say, and it says them well.

Interesting that both Lead Actor Oscars that year went to foreign performers, and both from Axis countries.

[Quote]Monty and Judy in the same movie -- gay icon overload!

And MARLENE. Plus Maximilian Schell who was HAF.

As much as I love Max Schell in the film I have never really understood what was Oscar-worthy about his performance. I suspect he won so the voters could give the film one major Oscar acknowledgement they didn't need to give to West Side Story.

Judy and Monty were both robbed of their Oscars here, especially Monty. Great dancer, but did George Chakiris have even one scene in WSS where he actually acted?

Such a good film! I have not seen it in years.

Why do you suppose Maximilian Schell never had much of a follow up in his career? Or did he and I missed it? He certainly had the talent and looks to be a huge star in the 1960s. I wonder if he just wasn't very ambitious or had a great disdain for Hollywood?

MS loathed Hollywood like most European actors. He had a marvelous career. Worked right up until his death.

R13, Max Schell was Oscar nominated 2 more times, for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and Julia (1977), and appeared in several other popular films like Topkapi, A Bridge Too Far, Counterpoint, The Odessa File, etc. But I think because of his background/accent, Hollywood opportunities were limited to WW2/Nazi/Cold War Espionage-related stuff, so he took on more character roles in order to avoid the typecasting rut. He also seemed to find more interest in writing, producing, directing.

His Marlene documentary is great IMO. Available to rent at Amazon Prime

S Hell was charming, paired with BD Wong in “The Freshman.”

I remember that Max was in a 1968 film called KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA. I've never seen it, but I think it got bad reviews, and I never hear anyone speak of it. I just checked and it is available for streaming.

KRAKATOA EAST OF JAVA was a laughable mess in its day, and is still regarded as such. Hammy acting, cheapo special effects, and dull writing continue to help make it an enduring struggle to watch.

And, to top it off, Krakatoa is actually WEST of Java, which everybody pointed out at the time….

R19: Ha!! Yes, I remember reading about the east/west confusion. How the hell did they ever manage to make a huge, stupid mistake like that?

I post this annually to remind people of what can happen if you remain apathetic to what is happening around you. "Where were we?" "What was a passing phase had become the way of life."

Exactly, r21. Frustrating that Judgment at Nuremberg isn't currently available on any of the streaming services. It's a must-watch these days.

The indifference here is appalling, R21 OP. Thank you for trying.

Perhaps they think the Resistance will have a YouTube channel.😢

Max's sister Maria Schell was a leading star of German cinema and was given and the big movie star build-up in Hollywood pictures, but I don't think she's as remembered today as her little brother.

Max also made a documentary about his sister Maria and like his doc on Marlene, it's very good.

Whenever I watch Burt Lancaster do an emotionally powerful scene, I'm never quite convinced that he's a good enough actor to pull it off. I'm sure he expected Oscar gold for his performance in Judgment at Nuremberg, but he was left off all the major awards list.

[quote]I'm never quite convinced that he [bold]was[/bold] a good enough actor to pull it off.

Correcting myself.

Max and Maria Schell (Swiss) both loathed Hollywood, but like most European actors they liked appearing in American films shot in Europe ($$$), many of them at Cinecitta studios in Rome.

This film was a major influence in my life, and I still think it's excellent.

My dad was stationed in Germany in the early 60s, and we went to the first playing at the base theater. Our next break from school was a trip to Dachau, then to Buchenwald.

He was in the occupation forces at the end of WWII, and wanted us to understand why such devestation should never happen again.

My grandfather's brother testified at Nuremburg. He was a non-Jewish political prisoner who spent 4 years in various camps. It's a miracle he survived. His story is fascinating.

What is never mentioned anymore is that this film was originally a roadshow presentation, with reserved seats, and Overture/Intermission/Entr’acte and Exit music. Not to mention a souvenir program, and a soundtrack release, both of which, for those who are interested, can be found fairly reasonably on E-Bay.

The 1961 film was an adaptation of a Playhouse 90 teleplay that aired live on CBS in 1959. That one also starred Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney, so it was a dress rehearsal of sorts for his Oscar-winning movie performance.

this graphic is one of the great ad campaigns of the era

^^ fabulous.

My parents took me to see this when I was 9 or 10. The Nazi story was being revealed throughout the 1950s and '60s and I was fascinated with it. My mother's father was from Austria and would not allow German to be spoken in his home, and I was curious.

I found it very believable that the Nazis had done to Monty's character what he described. Maximilan Schell was so beautiful, so boy-bonerlicious. But he looked so Jewish, I couldn't wrap my 10-year-old mind around the fact that he hadn't ended up in a concentration camp.

R35 Did you think Max looked Jewish?

At least Maximilian Schell got to cuckold Steve McQueen with the wife who actually cared about Steve

[quote] It hits you over the head with a hammer. But that’s typical Stanley Kramer.

Yes, portentous preaching.

Stark Black and White.

Glum.

With Endless Talk trapped in one set.

Stanley has been hitting us over the head for two hours and then wheels on two carnival cameo appearances from two vey damaged individuals which tips the ordeal into farce,

^^ perhaps you'd prefer a musical adaptation?

It's a festival of noses.

Beaky noses, straight noses, and retroussé.

But they're all facing in the one direction. Shouldn't the Americans ('the goodies') be facing to the right and the Germans ('the baddies') be facing left?

I was actually a lowly intern on the Broadway version of this film in 2000. I thought it was a fabulous production though, admittedly, I may have been too close to be objective. We didn't run long, I can't remember what the reviews were like but I imagine not stellar for whatever reasons.

Max Schell was in it but he played the Burt Lancaster role. I remember him as a towering courtly figure, silver-haired by then (I guess he was around 70?) and very courteous and respectful to one and all, even if he never quite learned everyone's names.. He arrived a few days late from Europe and was suffering from a bad cold or bronchitis or something throughout rehearsals but delivered by opening. Marthe Keller (Swiss movie star who was a former flame of Al Pacino) played the Dietrich role and George Grizzard was the judge (Spencer Tracy in the film). Michael Hayden (Billy Bigelow from the Lincoln Center Carousel) played Max's original role and Robert Foxworth played the Richard Widmark role . The Monty and Judy roles were played by young actors. A great memory for me!

Did Max play Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon movie in the late 70s or 80s?

Dear god I had the biggest crush on the guy who played Flash. I think he was the subject of my first wet dream.

[quote] I remember him as a towering courtly figure

Max was so handsome but I'm confused at how tall he was. He looked to be short compared to Richard Beymer in this film—

R41. Wonderful story. Maximilian Schell seems quite gentlemanly in the Marlene doc in which M gives him mucho mierda.

R44 He had to be 'gentlemanly' to Marlene because she was highly likely to shut down the film if he didn't kowtow to her demands.

It's hardly a 'film' when she refused to be shown on camera. He wasn't even allowed to film her hands or show her in sillhouette. Marlene had turned into Miss Havisham

Eldergay Alert!

I can remember having seen this one on the 4:30 movie on WABC Channel 7. Had never heard of the Holocaust at that age, but it was on in the background while I cooked up Creepy Crawlers. My one specific memory of the film was the song Du Du Licht Mir in Herzen (sorry for spelling).

r43, Max may literally not have been terribly tall (though I'd swear he was at least 5'11") but his presence in the room definitely was "towering."

His Marlene doc is fascinating and extraordinary, perhaps even more so because she's so uncooperative!

My twink ass would have cruised Maximilian so hard he would have felt compelled to nail me to the cross.

[quote] A reminder of how bad an actor Burt Lancaster could be

Suppose I should be pleased when an uber-virile grinning American millionaire producer patronises English and European directors and writers (such as Visconti and Rattigan).

But I bristle when he PRETENDS to be European (as in the Visconti films). And I bristle when he pretends to suppress his much-advertised virility by playing an old man ('Birdman of Alcatraz' and 'Judgement')

[quote] hits you over the head with a hammer

I never choose to watch this on TV even though it has 4 or 5 interesting stars in it.

Kramer hits us over the head with a hammer but it’s even more painful when interrupted by lively color advertisements.

I'm trying to remember if the Dietrich character is essential to the story? Or whether she's just another guest star cameo like Clift and Garland?

[quote] perhaps you'd prefer a musical adaptation?

It worked nicely for Gone With the Wind.

R50, she’s a love interest for Tracy. Her character could be removed without disrupting the story.

R42 No, Schell was not Ming. It was Max von Sydow

Hot at every age.

The Dietrich character is not a love interest for Tracy. IIRC she plays an impoverished aristocrat who hosts Tracy to tea and begs him to understand that she and those of her class were helpless in stopping the rise of Hitler.

I saw that at the Paris, r16. Here he is in Five Finger exercise with Roz...

She’s all that r55, and a love interest. It’s implied that they are growing romantically fond of each other.

Dietrich played a widow whose husband, a Nazi general, was executed by the Allies for war crimes. Marlene supposedly was so sickened by her character's line about how the German people were not aware of the Nazi atrocities that she didn't think she could go through with it. Her daughter, Maria, advised her to simply think of her mother. So Marlene played the part as if she were dear old Mutter.

R7 I don't think I'd like to sit next to Kramer at a dinner party. I suspect he's talk loudly and for for too long. I doubt he'd be capable of dialogue, subtlety or humor.

Kramer fell into the David Lean Syndrome of being unable to make a short movie.

And the Otto Preminger Syndrome of cramming too many box-office names into small movie.

I do wonder if Stanley Kramer is the precursor to Steven Spielberg? — I don't know, I've been avoiding Spielberg's stuff for 15 years.

Schell also directed feature films (as well as the documentaries already mentioned) and theater and opera productions. He worked with Leonard Bernstein on TV programs and concerts about Beethoven's life and music. He had something cooking on a lot of burners.

I think Joanie slipped him her digits.

And Max was marveling at her youthful and delicate décollatage.

^ He is utterly gorgeous.

I liked it when he beached his hair blond.

Blond

Sideburns

Though I love the photos of Max, Joan Crawford and the Oscar, I'm a bit confused. I believe he presented her with Anne Bancroft's Oscar when Miss Bancroft couldn't be present at the ceremony, but my old crumbling mind seems to remember Joan wearing a sparkling rhinestone gown at the event, not that simple black frock seen in r62 and r63. Am I misremembering?

Watching Kramer film like this and thinking it is too melodramatic and doesn't hold up.... is like complaining Noh Theater isn't realistic. Although black and white in an era of color, it wasn't neo-realism or new wave. It was Morality Play.

And Lancaster... was so incredibly over the top and bad he was sometimes good. The large gesture... the teeth that ate the Universe. A hoot, a trickster, a cartoon.... a star.

R67, You're not misremembering. Max did indeed present Joan with Anne's Oscar. The above photos were drom the previous year when Max won.

*from

Wow, r69! So Joan had 2 Oscar moments with Max? He should have made a documentary about her.

^ But Joan wouldn't have allowed Max to film her sad, wrinkled face and liver-spotted hands.

"Why is Mildred Pierce grabbing my ass?"

In a Elizabeth Taylor bio pic I was surprised to learn that Elizabeth named her daughter Maria after "my friend Maria Schell.". This surprised me. Where did these two become so close?

Liz may have met Maria Schell when they were doing Raintree County and the awful The Brothers Karamazov on the Metro lot in 1958.

Maria had a very heavy jawline which she tried to hide by smiling constantly. Her constant smiling in every film became extremely irritating regardless of the mood of the scene.

Though she did have an unhappy end.

R74, Maria Burton was adopted from Augsburg, Germany, and arranged by Maria Schell, or rather, Schell's private secretary.

What I want to know is whether Judy sat in that old man’s lap!

Maria Schell was on the cover of "Time" in 1957. She and Taylor were both much-photographed at the Cannes Film Festival that year too.

How could Swiss Maria help with an adoption in Germany? These two don't seem like natural friends as the Schells were considered intellectuals.

Elizabeth Taylor and Maria Schell had the same agent, Kurt Frings. Taylor and Eddie Fisher flew to Germany to meet with Maria Schell, who would assist them in adopting a German orphan. But by the time the adoption was finalized, Taylor had left Fisher for Burton.

I wonder why Liz wanted a German orphan?

[quote]What I want to know is whether Judy sat in that old man’s lap!

S-s-s-stop it...STOP IT!

R81, because the Romanian ones were all taken.

Eddie Fisher said he and Taylor first tried to adopt a boy (whom Elizabeth named Alexander) in Greece, but their application was eventually refused because they were Jewish. They returned to Rome, where Taylor was filming "Cleopatra", and `their friend Maria (who was was living in Munich at the time, not Switzerland) helped them find the girl in Germany. And in 1964 Fisher and Maria had an affair in Paris, where she was playing the title role in Somerset Maugham's play, "Caroline". Fisher said, "Maria was one of the few women who had something nice to say about me once our romance was over."

R81, Darfur orphans weren't yet in vogue.

Can I just say: how weird that Elizabeth, who already had three young children of her own, felt a need to adopt another. I wonder if it somehow had to do with trying to "legitimize" her marriage to Eddie without having to go through another pregnancy?

R86, According to Kitty Kelley, Eddie found out about Elizabeth's quickie affair with writer Max Lerner and confronted her about it. To show him that her love for him was rock solid and to cement their marriage, she wanted to have his baby, but she had her tubes tied after having Liza. According to a "friend," Elizabeth was not exactly the mothering type: "She likes babies, puppies, and kittens, and doesn't always diffentiate among them. They're all pets to her."

Now that sounds like the Elizabeth we know, r87.

Marlon Brando supposedly wanted the part of Hans Rolfe, the defense attorney, and reached out to Stanley Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann. They initially entertained the idea of casting Brando, but ultimately decided to stick with the lesser known Maximilian Schell because he did a smash-up job playing the part in the Playhouse 90 TV version. Brando and Schell had previously acted together, playing Nazi soldiers in "The Young Lions" (1958), with Monty Clift.

When Schell won the Oscar for Best Actor, he became the lowest-billed lead category winner in history, ranked fifth, after Richard Widmark and Dietrich, whose roles were secondary to the leads.

I know that it’s a preachy film in that Stanley Kramer way, but I still watch it whenever it’s on—I find it powerful and love the acting. I am surprised by all the hate for Lancaster—I thought he was fairly restrained here. Tracy has some of the most thankless dialogue—he has to be Mann’s “Porte parole”—the character who speaks for the author and it gets tiresome. I think both Clift and Garland should have won Oscars—neither Chakiris’ nor Moreno’s performances have any depth to them, but since they were the only nominees from WSS, they were part of the sweep (and neither Wood nor Beymer deserved to be nominated).

BTW, the father of lesbian left-wing radio host Stephanie Miller was one of the judges at the actual trials (as well as being Goldwater’s running mate in 1964).

I like the scene where Dietrich’s character tells Tracy that she didn’t know about the death camps and Tracy replied with something like, it seems nobody knew anything. He shouts dien her character’s claim that she and Lancaster’s character were good Germans.

[quote] I know that it’s a preachy film

[quote] It was Morality Play.

It has so little entertainment value that you never want to see it again.

[quote] They initially entertained the idea of casting Brando

That would have been a mistake.

Brando started going nutty after he spent time in Japan in '57. He was erratic and Kramer would not have been able to control him.

In the end it really is an ensemble film and Brando in that particular role would have unbalanced that unnecessarily. I probably need to rewatch the film but I'm really surprised Schell wasn't nominated for Supporting, though I guess they didn't want him competing in the same category as Monty.

When people criticize Stanley Kramer's films as being heavy-handed, I think they're confusing content with style. I haven't seen JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG in years, so I won't comment on that one specifically, but I have recently re-watched INHERIT THE WIND several times. I think it hold up beautifully, and I can't imagine how or why someone would make a "subtle" film about the Scopes trial or the Holocaust. And if someone tried to do so, I think the film would be ridiculous.

"Inherit the Wind" had entertainment value because we could laugh at how stupid Southerners are.

But I've forgotten if Kramer was pushing some morality onto us.

R96, the "morality" that's "pushed" in INHERIT THE WIND is the idea that religion should not hold sway over science and education. All of that is in the script, and as I noted in my earlier post, to downplay it or try to get the message across in a "subtle" way would have been ludicrous.

Marlene is so powerful in her last scene sitting silently while watching the phone ring. Max, years later, played Lancaster’s role on Broadway.

Just saw this pic of Marlene today - fabulous!

[quote] Marlene today

I think you mean Marlene 1961.

r98, please see my reminiscence of the Broadway production with Max.

I think the saddest thing is when a celebrated beauty is forced to hide.

Garbo agreed to appear on Broadway in the 1950s on the proviso that the first ten rows of seats be forbidden from sale.

Dietrich appeared with gauzy filters briefly in this bad movie from 1978 but she was terrified of exposing her face to Max in 1984.

It might make a good opera, with a set in ruins and the witnesses singing their hearts out.

[quote] It might make a good opera

Cynics have said the so-called 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission' in South Africa was a soap opera.

People came and 'sang out' their woes but there was no tangible result.

I looked up the Nuremberg trials on Wiki and it says 'In the end, the international tribunal found all but three of the defendants guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death, one in absentia, and the rest were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life behind bars. Ten of the condemned were executed by hanging on October 16, 1946.'

I love DataLounge because I can find an entire thread of over more than 100 replies about Judgment at Nuremberg (even if a good many are about hot Max Schell).

Marlene in the 1980s. She was still beautiful.