Inherit the Wind

Stanley Kramer, 1960, bw (8.3*)
A Tennessee science teacher, played by Dick York of Bewitched fame, goes on trial for teaching evolution in school. Acting great, and two-time Oscar® winner Fredric March, prosecutes the case. Spencer Tracy, also a two-time Oscar® winner, defends the teacher.

This is obviously a thinly disguised version of the famous "Scopes-Monkey Trial" of 1925. In fact, the films four screenwriters actually used some of the original trial transcripts for dialogue, they just changed the name of the characters.

The amazing part of this film is, of course, the acting from the two leads, who battle back and forth like heavyweight boxers. Fredric March, due to makeup designed to make him resemble William Jennings Bryan (see photo bottom), is almost unrecognizable. Thanks to their performances, this is one of the best legal films ever made. Fans of either actor, or of this rather specious reason for a trial, will love this classic film.

Here's a good description of the real trial at a legal site that reviews famous trials

Clarence Darrow (l.) and William Jennings Bryan (rt.),

at the famous 'Scopes Monkey Trial'

Note: just to show how much hype surrounds this non-issue, the fundamentalists actually invented the concept that Darwin said we descended from apes - he said "man and apes are parallel branches on the tree of life". On top of that, Charles Darwin didn't even invent the theory of evolution, his uncle did. Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace actually sent him an essay describing the same theory in 1858 before Darwin had published his own theory.

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Judgment at Nuremberg

Stanley Kramer, 1961, bw (8.6*)
Dramatic re-enactment of the famous Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals, held in 1948. German actor Maximilian Schell, as the defense attorney for the Nazis, steals this film from all the major American actors (which include Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, and Montgomery Clift), and won an Oscar® for best actor for the performance of his lifetime. In fact, it's one of the best of all-time, one of the most impassioned ever committed to film. Others in the all-star cast include Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and Richard Widmark.

It's really little more than another courtroom drama, only in this case the defendants are the biggest criminals of the century, if not all time - those who planned and ordered the systematic execution of the Jews during WW2.

The film is based on the actual legal transcripts of the famous trial. Each defendant claimed to have been "just following orders, under penalty of death", so the trial becomes an issue of when does an individual draw the line when his country and his orders become immoral and inhumanitarian. To what higher authority does a man owe his utmost allegiance? To country, to self, or to God? Thus the film deals with universal issues that face individuals in any time of war, and becomes an indictment of mankind itself, for no war is really different as the innocent die along with combatants.

A black-and-white classic, one of the last from a nearly extinct art form as nearly all films today are made in color.

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