Customer Reviews

Judgment At Nuremberg: Original MGM Motion Picture Soundtrack

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My brother, who has a genetic affection for all good things German, shall probably abscond with "Judgment at Nuremberg" - a truly fascinating listen. The use of traditional German songs is effective and symbiotic with the underscore, although used a bit too often. The underscore itself makes nice use of period sensibilities and works flawlessly. The narration is chilling, and I cannot think of hearing the score without its presence. It belongs alongside the score as a powerful recollection of film and international history as well as a wonder for the ears.

Film music exists to support the overall impact of the film, and only if the composer is very fortunate does the music make a major statement independently of the film. Ernest Gold (1921-1999) spent much of the 1940s and 1950s as the competent composer for such dismissable films as MAN CRAZY and THE SCREAMING SKULL; in the late 1950s, however, he proved himself a competent composer on such major projects as THE DEFIANT ONES and ON THE BEACH. Then in 1960 he received the project of a lifetime: EXODUS. The film itself received mixed reviews, but Gold's music was stunning, and he received an Academy Award for his work. He would go on to compose music for such notable films as A CHILD IS WAITING, IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, and SHIP OF FOOLS--all of them well respected, but none of the creating the same public stir.

The 1961 JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG is perhaps indicative of Gold's work: it is expert, often elegant, but it does not survive well when abstracted from the film itself. Much of the music is based on German songs, melodies, and marches popular both before and during World War II, with the five minute film Overture perhaps most memorable in its stirring mix of drum, echoing brass, and male chorus; much the same can be said for the film's musical Intermission. But while the rest of the music involved is both appropriate to the film and expertly executed and performed, it does not stand on its own to any great merit. Curiously, the soundtrack includes two speeches from the film: one by Burt Lancaster in the role of Nazi judge Ernst Janning, as he confesses to complicity in Nazi atrocities; and one by Spenser Tracy in the role of Judge Heywood, as he finds Jannings and his cohorts guilty. Both are remarkably performed, but like Gold's score, they must be considered within the context of the film. They do not stand alone to any great merit.

The soundtrack is well mastered and the sound quality is quite good. Nonetheless, this is really a selection that is best left to fans of the film, for whom the music--and most particularly the Lancaster and Tracy speeches--will summon memories of the film. Recommended to that extent.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

If you like German military marches and folk music, this will be an excellent collection for you.

I think Ernest Gold's score for this Stanley Kramer picture which quite honestly and seriously tries to capture Nazi Germany and its monstrous crimes is excellent. Gold who was a jewish refugee in Hollywood from Vienna tries to compose his own vision of the German mind and "spirit", using these horrible marches and male chorusses that express so much of the brutality and false military "Gemütlichkeit" , and using the famous song "Lili Marleen", and writing folksy, nearly Romantic melodies that to me have quite a Mahlerian sentimental touch. Gold tried to get into the German soul, and I who am German and a passionate anti-fascist feel that he succeeded very well, with just a touch of Hollywood melodrama. He also wrote a deceivingly nice kind of operetta song that show his Austrian roots. Gold also managed to musically paint the atmosphere of destruction and despair after the war, mixed with either great guilt and frozen feelings or with forgetting what happened and continuing like before.
When I listen to this music I really am transcended into another time and space though a very ugly and incredibly sad one.
Nobody can undo what happened.

MATTHIAS BÜDINGER