They died a day apart last week, Richard Widmark and writer Abby Mann, so when I sought a Widmark movie to view this weekend, I decided to watch for the first time JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961), which co-stars Widmark and was written by Mann, and which I have on a two-tape set purchased over a year ago for a couple of bucks from a used VHS sale. This is the one about the trials at Nuremberg of German judges whose rulings helped enable the resulting Holocaust. What a powerful movie. And I have to say I identified with Widmark’s character more than anybody else’s. He’s the righteous American officer (serving as prosecutor) who comes in, saw the devastation himself when he helped liberate the camps, takes a moral—and legal--stance and sticks with it, pushing aside all arguments thrown at him about cultural differences, political expediency, the demands of patriotism, the looming cold war, and the like. These four defendants were participants in Germany’s systemic extermination of millions and they have to pay for it. I totally got his character.

What struck me about this movie was all the star power on display and its use in making dramatic points. Would the movie have been as powerful without the stars? With only German actors playing the German characters? I was uncomfortable with Montgomery Clift’s performance as one of the Germans who testifies about the sterility laws and his victimization by those laws. (He’s way too busy “acting.”) I was worried about how I would react to Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster, both playing Germans, but then they came out and totally sold me in their pieces of the film. Garland is just great. So only Clift was a problem for me. There’s one great scene, the climactic moment actually, where Spencer Tracy, Widmark, Garland, Lancaster and Maximilian Schell all have their moments and I couldn’t help but think that the scene had more power because such iconic stars—and great actors all—were at the top of their game.

And then there’s Tracy and Marlene Dietrich. Wow. They have a few scenes together and the chemistry is there, despite Tracy being ailing and near the end of his career. It’s still star power of the highest order. (And if you ask me, Dietrich was still at her peak here.) Granted, Tracy found his soulmate (cinematic and otherwise) in Katharine Hepburn and that pair produced some high-powered celluloid, but I can’t help but wish Tracy had teamed up with Dietrich first, sometime back in the 1930s. I’d trade Dietrich’s DESIRE, with Gary Cooper, for a Tracy-Dietrich match-up. DESIRE’s director, Frank Borzage, directed Tracy a few times. And even Josef von Sternberg, best known for his six Dietrich films, spent some time directing Tracy, uncredited, on a film called I TAKE THIS WOMAN, on which Borzage also worked, uncredited. So the connection is there.

Dietrich plays a woman whose professed mission is to convince the Americans that “we’re not all monsters” and that “we didn’t know…how could we?” The ironic aspect of this, of course, is that Dietrich herself had become an American citizen and worked tirelessly and courageously for the Allied war effort against her native country. She knew.

What also struck me about the film was its whole section of graphic concentration camp footage and bulldozing of corpses and such. I didn’t know it was in the film. I imagine it was the first time most of the audience was seeing this footage.

I wonder if Clift wasn't a problem for himself, and that's maybe what's making you uncomfortable. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin to me - or what was left of his own skin, anyway. Struck me that way in SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER as well.

I haven't seen RED RIVER or THE MISFITS yet (I know, I know), so I can't speak to how he comes across in those other post-surgery pictures.

It's a great film. I've seen it several times, and, despite its length, I've never grown tired of it. I appreciate the way in which director Stanley Kramer nicely uses Ernest Laszlo's camera to swirl around, track across or zoom in on his cast, which adds some movement to a film whose strength is its dialogue and casting. Adding visual flair to a film that's mostly dialogue without calling attention to itself is a lesson many of today's directors should learn.

Mann's musings on patriotism and the complications of war had previously been seen in a 90-minute live presentation on TV's PLAYHOUSE 90 (which also starred Schell and was directed by George Roy Hill), but the film's extra length allows him and Kramer to spend more time looking into the horrors of the Nazi regime and the moral questions that surround those who participated, no matter their justification. For instance, Lancaster's character is portrayed as a thoughtful, decent man whom many Germans feel shouldn't be prosecuted at all.

You'll easily spot a young acclaimed stage and TV actor named William Shatner playing Tracy's aide. I've read a zillion interviews with Shatner, and not once has anyone, to the best of my knowledge, ever asked him about working on this film, which is ridiculous. My gosh, a young up-and-comer making a film with Tracy, Lancaster, Clift, Dietrich, et al...it must have been an amazing experience.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that Captain Kirk is in the film. And so is Colonel Klink! (Werner Klemperer plays one of the defendants.) That pairing is bound to excite more Mobians than the Tracy-Dietrich team-up. :D

The car accident and surgery did take something from Clift. I think he's fine in the underrated WILD RIVER and not bad in his drab SUMMER part (with his good friend Taylor) but the other pictures, shaky. I always liked him and the Mrs., forget about it; one of her favorites (we looked for his gravesite in the Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, but couldn't find it. His mother was a Quaker.)

As for JUDGMENT, the happy medium for me is the Broadway play Mann made from it, in 2001. Maximilian Schell played one of the Nazi defendants (the Lancaster part as I recall) in the show. A good cast: Robert Foxworth (Tracy's role), Marthe Keller (Dietrich), and the now-near-90 Joseph Wiseman.