Powerful, nearly lost Nuremberg film
Some films are so important that they resist all criticism and render it moot. The unearthed and restored Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, for instance: Anyone with any interest in Hitler, the Holocaust, and the international war-crimes trials that followed should see it.
Some films are so important that they resist all criticism and render it moot. The unearthed and restored
Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today,
for instance: Anyone with any interest in Hitler, the Holocaust, and the international war-crimes trials that followed should see it.
This is a documentary written and directed in 1948 by Stuart Schulberg, a veteran of the OSS War Crimes Unit who was charged with tracking down Nazi film evidence to be used at the Nuremberg trials. Commissioned by the War Department and screened throughout Germany (as part of the de-Nazification program), Nuremberg intercuts audio and video from the trials with footage that was entered as evidence in the prosecution's case.
Because of postwar political complications (most likely, the Cold War), the film (Nürnberg und seine Lehre) was never released theatrically in the United States. It had all but evaporated from history - the negative was lost, along with many sound elements - when Schulberg's daughter Sandra mounted an effort to restore it. Working with sound designer Joshua Waletzky, she pieced together a new negative and soundtrack incorporating original sound. It's an extraordinary document.
As the 22 defendants sit in their dock, listening to headphones, the prosecution lays it all out: the rise of Adolf Hitler; the diabolical plans for armed domination; the horrors committed against prisoners of war, civilians of occupied nations, disabled people, Jews. At each stage, for each count against them, unvarnished footage of war and atrocities unspools.
We see - just as they did in Nuremberg - the clips of invasions, speeches, goose-stepping armies, hollow faces, and mountainous piles of emaciated corpses. After all the decades, these images retain a terrible power.
Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Nürnberg und seine Lehre) *** 1/2 (out of four stars)
Written and directed in 1948 by Stuart Schulberg; reconstructed by Sandra Schulberg and Josh Waletzky. Narrated by Liev Schreiber. In English, Russian, French, and German with subtitles. Distributed by Schulberg Productions.
Running time: 1 hour, 18 mins.
Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (adult themes, disturbing images of World War II and the Holocaust)
Playing at: Ritz at the BourseEndText