Word: kramer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Judgment at Nuremberg (Roxlom; United Artists). "I do not know the method," wrote Edmund Burke, "of drawing up an indictment against an whole people." The prosecution at the 1946 Nuremberg trials kept Burke's dictum carefully in mind, but such scruples do not inhibit Producer-Director Stanley Kramer (On the Beach) and Scriptwriter Abby Mann, who also wrote the 1959 television play on which this movie is based. Ostensibly, four Nazi judges are on trial. Actually, by vigorous and frequent implication, the German people are on trial, and in a specious process that rivals in travesty the show trials...
...Director Kramer has stacked seven portentous names (Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Maximilian Schell, Montgomery Clift) above his portentous title-four of them are grossly miscast, but the customers won't realize that until too late. And he has shrewdly timed the release of his movie to coincide with the reading of the judgment in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. But despite a singularly adroit performance by Maximilian Schell (Maria's younger brother), Judgment is on the whole just one more courtroom meller and an awful long (3 hr. 20 min.) meller...
...sexual sterilization in the Third Reich. Next comes the prurient account of an episode in which an elderly Jew, accused of committing Rassenschande (race shame) with a 16-year-old "Aryan'' girl, is legally murdered by a German judge. Finally, to complete his crescendo of sensationalism, Kramer cuts to some film clips of Buchenwald and starts bulldozing piles of corpses toward the horrified customer...
...Winthrop players do all this, and do it well. Stanley F. Pickett as Mr. Horner is a grinning, leering wonder. Yet his part is perhaps easier than those of Mr. Pinchwife (Michael Rowan), and Mr. Sparkish (Howard Kramer), and Sir Jasper (Chuck Breyer). Rowan creates a convincing picture of a blustery old fool; Kramer is the biggest, dumbest fop you or I have ever seen; and Breyer is hilarious as the Ed Wynn-ish cuckold...
...Crimson will probably start veteran Mike Kramer at outside left, with sophomore John Thorndike in Wendell's spot at inside left and Al Chang replacing Ohiri at center forward. Seamus Malin at inside right and Sam Rodd will round out the line. Emmanuel Boye might be able to play, but last night he remained a question mark in the starting line...