Judgement at Nuremburg (1961):

 

 

With a host of stars that MGM's producers back in the 1930s would have been envious of, Judgement at Nuremburg is one of the greatest pieces of ensemble cinema from the last century.

It's 1948 and four Nazi judges are being tried for abusing the German judicial system by enacting the party's cleansing policies. As the Cold War is beginning to heat up, Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) faces the moral dilemma of whether the trials should continue amongst political opposition, in order to bring a small amount of justice to those affected by the former judges' actions.

The film is an intriguing portrait into the post-war German mentality, as Haywood finds it near enough impossible to understand the actions of the nation under Nazism due to the lack of people willing to admit an inside knowledge. However, the main issue within the narrative is that of responsibility: responsibility to country and to one's own sense of right and wrong. With a cast of stellar performers (Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Montgommery Clift and watch out for William Shatner) and a controversial subject manner, Judgement at Nuremburg proves to be a film that is indispensable within this genre and that of war films.