"Judgement at Nuremberg", originally a play by Abby Mann, released as a movie in 1961 and set in 1948, is about one of the less well-known trials of Germans charged with crimes against humanity during World War II. In the case dramatized in this movie, the defendants are four high-ranking German judges who are charged with… Well, with something bad. The fact that we couldn’t really figure out what they are ultimately found guilty of was our problem with the movie. But, let’s save that for later.

The movie, which was directed by Stanley Kramer, stars Spencer Tracy as lead judge in a three man tribunal, Richard Widmark as the lead prosecuting attorney, and Burt Lancaster as one of the four German defendants. It also has Marlene Dietrich in an important supporting roll as the wife of a professional German soldier previously executed for war crimes and Maximilian Schell as Burt Lancaster’s German defense attorney. Judy Garland and Mongomery Clift appear in rolls as witnesses for the prosecution. A host of other gifted actors appear in supporting rolls. Including a very subdued William Shatner.

Widmark, as chief prosecutor, does an excellent job, as good as the job he later did in "The Bedford Incident". Burt Lancaster, as the most self aware of the defendants, is outstanding. (As he usually is, in any movie). Spencer comes across convincingly as a not so famous American jurist thrust into a demanding task of overseeing the imposition of fair and impartial international justice. Maximilian Schell is outstanding as a defense attorney trying to defend his client, and Germans as a people, from complicity in the crimes of the Nazi Reich, who doesn’t quite notice that he is falling into the same way of thinking and acting as the Nazis themselves. (This is a roll for which Schell won an Oscar.)

As the trial goes on, the principal characters do dramatize the complex morality and responsibility of Germans serving the Hitler. Question such as, literally, "who knew what when?" are addressed, as are the potential for great conflict between loyalty to your nation and to something which transcends nationality. At the same time, in some outside the court scenes, questions about the complicity, morality, and emotional blindness of the Americans dishing out justice in this case are effectively raised.

One of many "Judgement at Nuremberg" scenes I found tremendously moving was that of Spencer’s character visiting alone the "Reichsparteitagsgelände", the giant outdoor stadium at Nuremberg, where the infamous Nazi party rallies were staged. While he is standing near the podium, the viewers are invited into his imagination to hear along with him the voice of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech to the tens of thousands of party faithful gathered in the now empty stadium.

The scene was powerful to me for two reasons. One is because it lead me to understand that Spencer’s character heard those same speeches over the radio in the United States as a younger man, and is still able to call them to mind, along with the crowds cheering, after the war. Another reason, which may be not readily available to most other viewers today, is that my mother-in-law was able to turn to my wife and I and say, "Yes that’s his voice. I heard it myself on the radio before the war." Of course, the person she meant was Adolf Hitler.

Other scenes outside the courtroom have the great German wartime ballad "Lili Marlene" as background music, being played or sung by Germans. The fact that this song was also a favorite of many American and British Commonwealth soldiers, who would tune into German radio stations during the war to hear it, is also implies a sense of moral ambiguity. As do several scenes in which the Widmark’s character is pressured to go easy on the accused Germans because the Americans are moving more and more into confrontation with the Soviet Union, and are going to need the friendship of the German people in the future. The growing confrontation is made clear by the interruption of a party to recall American army officers to their units after the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia and scenes set in the office of a senior American officer who is involved in organizing the Berlin Airlift.

But, back to the courtroom. Which itself is the source of many dramatic and moving scenes. Movies of just liberated concentration camps, introduced as evidence and shown during the trial, with damning narration by Widmark’s character, are very powerful. They highlight the undeniable fact that real evil has gone on in Germany. An evil that was so widespread that it very difficult to believe any of the movie’s many German characters who claim that they had no knowledge of what was going on. It is the background of evil, probably better known and understood by the average movie viewer in 1961 when "Judgement at Nuremberg" was released than it is by the average movie viewer today, which haunts the entire movie.

But, probably the single most moving courtroom scene is Lancaster’s character standing up in the dock to order his own defense attorney from haranguing a prosecution witness. The drama is particularly powerful because Lancaster’s character has remained mute during the entire trial up until that point.

So, what evidence does Lancaster want to stop his attorney from gathering? None. He doesn’t mind the evidence. It is the fierce attack on the witness that Lancaster is trying to stop. Because that kind of courtroom attack is a throwback to the unrestrained attacks of zealous German prosecutors of the Nazi era. And it is a powerful statement that it the German defendant, rather than one of the American judges, who puts a stop to it.

But, again, what kind of evidence was the attorney after? Apparently, that a certain German witness, wonderfully played by Judy Garland, did in fact have sexual relations with an Aryan, who was convicted and executed for this crime of "racial mixing". It is this "truth" about many of the trials for which the four German judges are now themselves on trial which Maximilian Schell’s character is constantly trying to bring out. That those defendants who the judges are accused of illegally condemning were technically "guilty" of the crimes they were accused of, and that the judges therefore are not guilty because they were responsible only for enforcing German law, not for making that law.

The defense attorney does make his case. At least in my opinion, and the opinions of those who watched the movie with me. "Make his case" in the sense that the prosecuting attorney does nothing to refute his logic, and the tribunal judges let his line of argument go unquestioned during the trial itself.

Yet the German judges are all found guilty. The guilty verdict is a decision, delivered by Spencer Tracey’s character, which the viewer is expected to agree. And obviously the central point of the movie is that despite all the ambiguity, past and present, men are responsible for their individual actions, with no recourse to German defense of "just following orders", or in this case "just following the law". Yet, I am left fully believing that those men were not found guilty for the relatively trivial crimes which they are accused, but for the greater crimes of the German people.

Please note, I say "relatively minor crimes", not to exonerate the judges in the movie of being immoral people, guilty of crimes. Or to excuse Nazi Germany. I am just saying that in the "real world", without the background of the holocaust, I do not believe guilty convictions could have been obtained that based on the evidence presented at the fictional trial.

So I was left hanging. Convinced that the movie, despite the great acting and the powerful scenes, had not made its central case. Thus the words "hallow core" in my title. In fact, I think that the play that the movie was based on, and those who adapted it as a movie unconsciously made the same mistake as Germany’s Nazi judges. They are ready to condemn based on community guilt, and expect everyone to accept their views. Which in its own way, is an interesting point. And, if made clear during the movie, would have made it more powerful, because the "conclusion" would have been less morally satisfying.