Nuremberg (1925)

Some 32 years ago I attended an international convention in Chicago. There was a reception out of town and à colleague and I waited for a taxi to take us back to our hotel. At the pick up pony were two elderly lawyers who already knew one another ss they were part of the Prosecution team at the Nuremverg trial. Their conversation in the taxi we were invited to share was so fascinating that we stayed up with them at their hotel until 2am listening to their memories of the trial. I kept in touch with one Henry King and this generated a keen interest in what has been called ‘the trial of the century’ Henry informed me that the lead American prosecutor Robert Jackson was an appellate lawyer and therefore inexperienced with cross examination but the British barrister David Maxwell Fyfe less so.

This film focuses on the relationship between an appointed psychiatrist and Herman Goering whom he profiles. The psychiatrist Douglas Kelley ( Rami Malek) Is reproached for being too close to GOERING ( Russell Crowe). I have to say that in all my reading and studies of Nuremverg this is the first I have heard of James Kelley.

The film has several key omissions. Göring probably was a narcissus but he was also a serial looter of art , and as head of the Luftwaffe because of his early support of Hitler and rôle in the Munich putsch of 1922 in which he was wounded by gunshot and became a morphine addict. He was also outfought by Hugh Dowding and Keith Park of the RAF in the Battle of Britain as azresult of which à hitler turned eastwards and abandoned Operation Sea Lion. Getting one of the biggest global movie stars The Indictments were served by Airey Neave not the chief gaoler Burton c. Andrus as shown in the film Russell Crowe was clearly a catch and he delivers a fine performance. Famous for Gladiator , Crowe since then has taken on less glamorous roles to his credit. I was less convinced by flavour of the month Rami Malenkovic as Kelley but Richard T Grant portrayed David Maxwell Fyfe brilliantly and his devastating cross examination of Goering showing that he must have known what was going on because of the position he held as as Reichsmarshal was one of the film’s highlight ax
It’s not a film to ben enjoyed as much as appreciated – the footage of the concentration camps is too harrowing and it falls à short of Stanley Kramer’s 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg