Judgment at Nuremburg: Special Edition

Although Stanley Kramer had a tendency to preach in his social dramas (Inherit the Wind, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), there's no denying the searing power of this impassioned 1961 courtroom epic (boasting an Oscar-winning script by Abby Mann, based on his original screenplay for a 1959 Playhouse 90 TV episode) that delivers a forceful indictment of the Nazi regime. Starring Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, and Judy Garland, Judgment at Nuremberg follows the 1948 trial of a group of lower-profile Nazi judges and scholars standing trial for war crimes. The central issue faced by the court and its chief justice (Tracy) lies in determining how to assign accountability for atrocities that, according to the defense attorney (Schell, who received a well-deserved Academy Award), were the result of "following orders." While we tend--justifiably so--to place the barbarism of the Nazis in a class by itself, one can't help but notice the thematic echoes in incidents ranging from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. Debuting on DVD in a handsome-looking widescreen transfer with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and mono sound, Judgment at Nuremberg: Special Edition features the 20-minute "In Conversation with Abby Mann and Maximilian Schell" featurette, the six-minute "The Value of a Single Human Being" featurette (focusing on Mann's script), and the 15-minute "A Tribute to Stanley Kramer" with his widow, actress Karen Sharpe. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)