Sud narodov / Nuremberg Trials

Roman Karmen: Суд народов / Sud narodov / Nuremberg Trials (SU 1946).

Суд народов / Nuremberg / Kansojen oikeus / Inför folkens dom.
    SU 1946. PC: The Central Studio of Documentary Film. D: Roman Karmen, Jelizaveta Svilova. SC: Roman Karmen. DP: Roman Karmen, Boris Makasejev, Sergei Semjonov, Viktor Shtatland, J. Stalmakov. M: A. Gran. Reader of commentary: L. Shamara.
    A documentary film of the Nuremberg Trials (20 Nov 1945 - 1 Oct 1946) against the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher / Nürnberger Hauptkriegsverbrecherprozess.
    THE ACCUSED (in the order of appearance): Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Günter Funck, Hjalmar Schacht, Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath, Hans Fritzsche.
    PROSECUTORS (seen in the film): Robert Jackson (US), Roman Rudenko, Alexandrov, Scheinin, Raginsky, Pokrovsky, Smirnov (SU), Sir Hartley Shawcross, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe (GB).
    THE JUDGES: Iona T. Nikitchenko, Aleksandr Voltshkov (SU), Sir Geoffrey Lawrence (GB), Norman Birkett (GB), Francis Beverley Biddle (US), John J. Parker (US), Henri Donnedieu de Vabres (FR), Robert Falco (FR).
    66 min. A good 62 min print of the 1960 reissue version with e-subtitles in Finnish by Onni Nääppä.
    Viewed at SEA, Orion, Helsinki, 10 May 2005.

Roman Karmen the daredevil cinematographer was a war correspondent who filmed the war, the capitulation of Dönitz and the (set up) raising of the Soviet flag on the Reichstag building in Berlin. He felt it was his obligation to cover the main Nuremberg trial for the duration, 10 months, from the beginning until the execution.

Theoretically, an ideal pair to Triumph des Willens showing the rightful end of the villains. The authentic documentary footage from ruined Nuremberg and from Nazi horrors, as well as the newsreel footage from the trial with the accused sweating in their stand make this worth seeing. There is also a fascinating montage of the then state-of-the-art technology at the disposal of the court and the press.

But the hectoring commentary spoils the film. Riefenstahl had no commentary and included 20 minute long sequences without speeches. Karmen's film is no work of art. (Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg, US 1961, does not handle this main trial but a special trial two years later).

This shortened 1970 version never mentions Stalin and has a modern prologue and epilogue heavy-handedly warning against BRD Neo-Nazism and praising the GDR. All the same, worth screening for the interested and attentive audience, who discussed the film quite reservedly after the show.