The Best Lawyer Performance in Cinematic History
Maximilian Schell in Judgment at Nuremberg: A Cautionary Tale in Geopolitics
In 1961, a little-known Austrian-born Swiss actor, in his first major English-language film role, managed to steal every one of his scenes in the presence of an A-list cast in a courtroom drama of epic proportions, in what would be perhaps the most underrated Oscar-winning performance by a lead actor in cinematic history.
His name is Maximilian Schell, and his commanding and breathtaking role as Hans Rolfe, a fiery German defense attorney, in Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg showcased an incredible measure of wit, charm, and humor that launched a career that would span decades and explore a milieu of World War II topics and moral dilemmas. But Schell’s artistic prowess and striking looks nearly threaten to overshadow the tense psychological battle on display in the film, that defined Cold War geopolitics and continues to reverberate through today’s complex political landscape. In this sense, Schell’s on-screen dexterity and artifice neatly embody the film’s central theme, amplifying its dire warning: that moral imperatives can easily be buried under the guise of legalistic jargon and verbal persuasion.
An Overview
Nominated for a staggering 11 Oscars, Judgment at Nuremberg denied the vastly overrated and escapist West Side Story a chance to secure a record-tying full sweep, thanks to the immensely deserved win for Abby Mann’s hypnotic screenplay, an adaptation of his own stage play, the earlier televised version of which also starred Maximilian Schell in the same role as the film.
The bulk of the film’s narrative is told through the eyes of Judge Dan Haywood, a small-town American politician who is faced with the arduous task of presiding over the military tribunal of four German judges and prosecutors, accused of using the legal system to facilitate the Nazi regime’s crimes against humanity. Played with subtle sensitivity by the legendary Spencer Tracy, Haywood embodies an impassioned though waning spirit, a man whose parochial sense of justice and community is tested in the extreme. Of the four defendants, the most prominent is Ernst Janning, a widely respected jurist and legal scholar, a symbol of national pride for Germany. The enigmatic Burt Lancaster portrays the guilt-ridden Janning, who remains a hollow shell of a man in the courtroom, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of a legal proceeding that he feels will bear no weight on righting past wrongs.
While a cursory glance may suggest the trial to be an open-and-shut case, early arguments quickly dismiss this notion. Schell’s Hans Rolfe proves to be a force to be reckoned with, his youthful rigor running as deep and sharp as his black hair and robe. He proceeds to unravel layers of truth hiding in plain sight, maintaining that a judge does not make the laws but carries out the laws of a country. He contends that guilt of high crimes would constitute direct awareness of larger, external processes beyond the realm of the courts in which verdicts were delivered. After all, the men on trial are not the top Nazi commanders. They did not directly administer executions or run concentration camps. They simply handed down judgments amid a national and arguably existential crisis.
Rolfe’s appeal to logic is eloquently complemented and challenged by American prosecutor Colonel Tad Lawson, whose crass disposition and embitterment result from having witnessed the horrors of liberating Dachau at the end of the war. That a liberator of concentration camps could prosecute men whose decisions led innocent people to those very camps presents a severe conflict of interest. The surplus of pathological shortcomings from Lawson results in most of his objections to Rolfe’s line of questioning being overruled. In a standard court case, this degree of bias could be challenged by the defense due to the prosecutor’s personal animus towards the defendant. Nevertheless, this is an intentional anachronism that is understandable for the sake of achieving dramatic clarity and ideological symbolism in the film.
With a hardened war veteran prosecuting, and a disillusioned Republican judge from Ohio presiding, defense attorney Hans Rolfe stands in distinction with his unique arrangement of logical reasoning that pierces you right in the heart with its brutal honesty. By placing irrefutable facts center stage, such as American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ decision to uphold eugenics, a crime attributed to the German defendants, a shocking hypocrisy ripples across the playing field. What moral authority do American victors have to condemn the acts of the vanquished, when they are responsible for many of the same actions? As this sense of disorientation settles into public consciousness, efforts to contextualize wartime events begin to reveal a murky and morally ambiguous picture.
Creative Technical Work
Judgment at Nuremberg does not achieve its merits by being strictly realistic, but by using tropes and technical feats such as strategic scene-blocking, composition, and framing to emphasize the profound moral and ethical questions at the heart of the trial. In the midst of opening statements, Schell’s character, Attorney Hans Rolfe, abruptly and inexplicably abandons his German tongue for English. This trade-off occurs mid-sentence and this sudden lapse in consistency is expounded with a sudden zoom-in. Why? This is an intentional anachronism by Director Stanley Kramer to overcome the language barrier and allow for seamless audience engagement with the arguments on both sides. So even though we hear all the characters speaking in English, on screen they still fumble with their earpieces and wait for the slight audio delay from the interpreters. This was a brilliant and subtle way to keep the audience a step ahead without losing sight of the courtroom tension and conflicting attitudes.
As the film progresses, most viewers will be akin to the notion that no single perspective embodies an unshakeable or impervious account, but rather that truth emerges from balancing competing narratives without an overly logical or pathological appeal. Schell’s performance as Hans Rolfe is the crux, the nexus point on which the whole film hinges. Lithe and ruthless, steady yet fervent, he executes his arguments with precision, without losing sight of the sensitive nature of the human condition. Rolfe’s Achilles heal is his dogged sense of pride for his country, and his willingness to go to extreme lengths to rationalize the actions of his client, regardless of actual or potentially malicious intent. His tranquil demeanor can easily morph into a vehement outburst of indignation.
Striking a Delicate Balance: A Shift in Venue
The perplexing duality of international affairs is explored with remarkable tact in Judgment at Nuremberg, especially the idea that two seemingly contradictory stances can both retain merit. During the trials, immense pressure was placed on American judges to give light sentences to German judges, amidst the ongoing Berlin crisis, when the West sought solidarity with Germany in their newfound opposition to the USSR. There was a sharp tension between seeking justice for past war crimes and the emerging political needs of the Cold War which precipitated the Berlin Blockade (1948-1949) and later the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. These events highlighted the strategic importance of Germany in the East-West conflict, from an American standpoint.
Navigating the delicate balance of holding Nazis accountable while also fostering a stable and cooperative West German state raises questions of how to achieve effective negotiations, which will never suit all parties uniformly without careful compromise. An effective negotiator can advance a settlement for affected parties without being aimlessly offensive to his adversary. Overall, this interpretation underscores the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of post-WWII international affairs, where moral imperatives and pragmatic geopolitical strategies were frequently in competition, at a time when our enemies and allies had switched places overnight.
In the final chapter of Paul Brickhill’s The Great Escape, an iconic first-hand account of the most daring Allied POW escape operation in Germany during World War II, the author recounts how amidst the Third Reich’s impending defeat, certain recaptured Allied officers received benevolent treatment from their Nazi captors. This was an inexplicable occurrence to most POWs, but it is now abundantly clear that the seeds were being planted for the post-war landscape. The Soviet Union becoming the new adversary for Western powers, certainly motivated some Germans to seek favorable treatment from the British or Americans by showing respect or courtesy to captured officers. High-ranking Nazi officials, who knew their defeat was a certainty, tried to avoid harsh reprisals and sought to align themselves with the Western Allies against the Soviet Union. In the Judgment at Nuremberg, one of the German judges on trial defiantly proclaims to Judge Haywood, “We were a Bulwark against Bolshevism. A pillar of Western culture! A bulwark and a pillar the West may yet wish to retain!”
The most prominent culmination of the regrouping effort came with Operation Paperclip when over a thousand Nazi scientists and engineers were recruited for the American space program, including the Saturn V rocket’s chief architect, Werner von Braun, a criminal mastermind who evaded prosecution following the war. To quote Michael C. Ruppert, one of America’s bravest investigative journalists, “The Third Reich did not lose World War II. They just changed venues.”
Hans Rolfe’s passion and immense knowledge serve as the essential foundation that shatters parochial notions of time and place by transcending the virtue signaling and shame-driven activism that promotes a binary sense of innocence and guilt. He is able to communicate the reasonable merits of defending a group of people who in practically every other social context would seem indefensible. This nuanced approach invites a high degree of critical analysis from which flaws of reasoning are less likely to go unnoticed. Schell maintains a grace and easygoing nature and issues compatibility to the unsuspecting viewer, who can perceive larger truths in the public arena by rigorously confronting the facts that emerge from the cross-examination and deliberation.
The World’s Guilt
In the film’s final act, Maximilian Schell delivers his monumental closing monologue, which plays out in a four-minute-long continuous take, with the camera tracking in a steady, semi-circular pan, brushing past the backs of the court’s stenographers, interpreters, and judges. In outbursts of unmatched vitriol, Rolfe calls into question the World’s guilt in facilitating Hitler’s rise to power and the complicity of many world leaders in enabling Nazi aggression, such as the Vatican’s Reichskonkordat Pact, Winston Churchill’s praise, and the Nazi-Soviet pact. He also touches upon a stark reality that often goes unnoticed: “Where’s the responsibility of those American industrialists who helped Hitler to rebuild his armaments, and profited from that rebuilding?” This was a startling revelation for audiences to confront in 1961, let alone throughout the many decades since, that American bankers and industrialists openly supported and profited from the Nazi regime, most prominently Henry Ford and Prescott Bush, grandfather of America’s 43rd President. Trying his best to instill a spirit of resistance in his client, Ernst Janning, Rolfe remarks, “I could show you pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Is that an example of their moral superiority?”
It takes a watchful eye and multiple viewings to pick up on the paradox of Rolfe’s arguments. For example, when questioning a doctor about his complicity in swearing the loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler, Rolfe remarks, “We are not interested in what everyone did. We are interested in what you did.” Yet in his final monologue, after his client admits to a great deal of responsibility under oath, Rolfe posits, “The whole world is as responsible for the rise of Hitler as Germany.” Is this an outright contradiction or a sign of a more articulate nature of the issue at hand? One could argue that Rolfe is exercising a sly hand to play the court’s emotions, but a deeper analysis suggests an eye-opening duality - that the world as a whole can share guilt due to complacency and ignorance practiced out of political convenience, and at the same time, individuals can bear responsibility for succumbing to external pressure and sacrificing their critical eye and morality for short-term comfort and societal acceptance.
Legally, Rolfe provides a skillful and nearly foolproof defense, including the admission of documents and letters from religious and political refugees all over the world showing how Ernst Janning saved the lives of many, and even kept a Jewish physician at his side. However, the stratification of legal constructs downplays the larger question of moral responsibility that is not explicitly defined by the law. Herein lies the deep moral premise of the film: Does the lack of individual culpability absolve one of moral responsibility for larger processes beyond their control and awareness, when their input may have produced a difference? Rolfe contends that in lieu of the multitude of parties and nations who bear responsibility for Hitler’s rise to power, such a transformative process cannot be placed on any one man. As a proud German, he strives to preserve national dignity and instill a sense of hope and belonging for future generations, who will no doubt have to cope with a history of unspeakable crimes, forever attached to their name by mere association. Schell is able to convey these stellar critiques of the justice system by expressing a sense of pride compounded by a spirit of underdog resistance.
The Value of a Single Human Being
In 1961, Judgment at Nuremberg dared to do what no film had done before: showcase real-life footage from the Holocaust, images that were graphic and depicted its horrors head-on. Director Stanley Kramer did not hold back - there was no sanitizing the events or treating the audience with kid gloves. There was no jolted build-up or sensation used in the presentation of the tapes - no zoom-ins, pans, or dissolves - just Prosecutor Lawson's narration and the court’s reaction shots of a record that speaks for itself. That countless Germans had turned a blind eye or were unaware of these horrors that were taking place in their country, perhaps at most, a few miles away from their hometowns, will be a startling realization for many to stomach.
Yet it’s happening again.
We live in a world where genocide has become a normalized facet of the human experience.
The post-war era witnessed a startling new phenomenon, in which deliberate mass murder took on a new psychological disconnect when the towering mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively shielded the destruction hidden beneath. Today, millions of people all over the world watch comfortably behind their screens as untold atrocities continue to be perpetrated on civilian populations, decades after we were told: “Never again”.
Paralyzed by fear, we find it convenient to rationalize horrors as gladiatorial exchanges between good and evil. It’s a convenient narrative to adopt, that proves to be personally comforting and politically expedient. Sanitized by the distance and shielded by layers of politically charged narratives, it’s become all too easy to scroll past new statistics or change the channel, to shut out inconvenient truths. The subtleties of Maximilian Schell’s performance evoke ever-changing attitudes and outward dispositions, which underline the lesson that responsibility cannot be defined by legal precedents and the confines of a courtroom alone, but rather through a conscientious awareness and initiative on the part of all people, everywhere, to stand up against injustice even when it’s beyond their immediate reach.
A Final Takeaway
As someone who has found intellectual refuge in classic American and international cinema, there is no shortage of such films I would recommend to avid or even casual filmgoers. However, Judgment at Nuremberg is one I believe should be mandatory viewing for every high school and college student in America. To evade or fail to grasp the central premise and ideological struggles espoused in this film would be to deprive oneself of an indelible understanding of both past and contemporary geopolitics.
The problem we face as a nation and amongst our international colleagues is not a depravity of humanitarian impulses, but rather an incorrect diagnosis of the true state of world affairs. These misleading notions foster division and niche pockets of competing interests that limit avenues for consensus - and this is why we need a rigorous debate to tackle sensitive and controversial issues. Judgment at Nuremberg manages to navigate a complex subject with a perfect balance of diplomatic nuance, refraining from legalistic jargon and bland dictation. This is a film that respects the intelligence of its audience, by prompting critical thinking instead of preaching. The film’s three-hour runtime and electrifying final monologue by Hans Rolfe culminates in a shocking verdict and a final line so chilling it’s best left to the individual to digest, absent my input.
Maximilian Schell’s stellar performance and cautious persuasion make the film more relevant than ever, by humanizing and amplifying an unpopular but necessary approach to truth, justice, and transparency. The themes presented invite criticism of people and processes, without imposing a definitive sense of where one’s flaws truly lie. I have seen no other film tackle the perplexing duality and paradox of world affairs as this one has. It’s easily the most compelling and important courtroom drama ever made. If anyone wants to understand our current geopolitical crisis, this film is an ideal place to start. Schell’s performance will illuminate second-hand guilt, passion, and pride simultaneously, unraveling something equally enthralling and frightening about the human experience and our response to tragedies.