The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
65. 1961 - Judgment At Nuremberg
Honourable Mentions: The Innocents, West Side Story, Yojimbo
Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg is a seminal entry in that great American filmmaking tradition: the courtroom drama. A rebuttal to relitigated post-war narratives of the rise of the Nazis and whether justice was really delivered following their defeat, Kramer's film remains depressingly prescient and appropriately unflinching in its deliberations, as district court judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) presides over the prosecution of Nazi judges who played an instrumental role in facilitating Hitler's atrocities.
Spencer Tracy is joined by Maximillian Schell and Richard Widmark, who debate for the defence and prosecution respectively, while Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, and William Shatner (!) round out the supporting cast. Most captivating of all is Burt Lancaster, who plays the haunted judge Ernst Janning. Lancaster spends much of the film in silence but ultimately delivers one of its most affecting moments in a monologue of pure self-immolation.
The intent from Kramer isn't to assuage guilt, however. Judgment at Nuremberg is thoroughly righteous in holding to account not just those who enabled the Holocaust, but the victors who decided justice was inconvenient as the Cold War took shape. It's through this conclusion that Kramer yields Nuremberg's most decisively devastating moments, as Janning, confined to a cosy prison cell, is refused sympathy by the judge who delivered his sentence. Haywood leaves him standing, devoid of catharsis, before heading to the exit, with the final frames of the film revealing that, of all the judges prosecuted at Nuremberg, none were still serving a prison sentence by 1961.
When the rebuild is rotten, knock it down.