Written, directed, and music by Jean-Christophe Klotz
Opening in New York January 27 and expanding to select cities in January/February
Unrated
58 minutes
I think a lot about history, historical memory, and historical literacy. (After all, it’s kind of my job.) It is critical that we ensure the recognition of humanity’s errors and crimes, uplift those who subverted them,, and bring change in the present from that knowledge. Filmmakers for the Prosecution, the new American re-edit of 2020’s Nuremberg, des images l’histoire (also dir. Jean-Christophe Klotz) has that same spirit at its core. The film sheds light on three histories. The history of the Holocaust and of Nazi crimes against humanity, and its prosecution at the Nuremberg trials is paramount. Then there’s the cinematic history, and film used as both historical documents and (for the first time) criminal evidence. Thirdly, the personal history of the Schulbergs, the multigenerational filmmaking family, gives this hour-long documentary its niche in a sea of Holocaust studies.
The film recounts the post-World War II work of brothers Budd Schulberg — fresh off the publication of his debut novel What Makes Sammy Run? and a decade before he would write the Oscar-winning script for On the Waterfront (dir. Elia Kazan, 1954) — and his younger brother Stuart, who would go on to produce documentaries for the State Department and for NBC. Similarly, Filmmakers for the Prosecution is itself a family affair. Film producer Sandra Schulberg, Stuart’s daughter, has curated photos and documents from her voluminous family archives, preserved the 1948 documentary directed by Stuart, Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, in 2009, and co-produced Filmmakers. Budd’s and Stuart’s sons provide voiceover work reading their fathers’ letters in the film. And of course, Budd and Stuart were already second-generation filmmakers. Their father, B.P., produced some of the biggest silent films of the 1920s and ‘30s.
Working under John Ford, head of the photographic unit for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and commissioned as a naval Commander, Stuart and Budd compiled films and photos in a defeated and occupied Germany to be used as evidence in the International Military Tribunal, to be held in the Palace of Justice at Nuremburg in fall 1945. Filmmakers cuts, largely with deftness, between letters written by Stuart and Budd, historic reenactments of the OSS team at work in recording footage (or at times obtaining film recorded and hidden away by the Nazis), historic and contemporary reenactments of the editing process, and (thankfully) a small modicum of historical talking-heads from French and German experts, along with the OSS’ footage itself.
The Schulbergs’ team analyzed thousands of photos and negatives, distilling hours of footage shot by Leni Riefenstahl, snapshots by Heinrich Hoffmann (Hitler’s personal photographer), and film reports shot by SS officials shown at the homes of Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler as after-dinner entertainment. (That last fact alone shows the evil and, put plainly, sick-fuck-itude of the Nazis.) Klotz depicts the drama before the trial amid systematic burning of film footage by Nazis just after the war. Under profound stress to capture the evidence needed for the chief American prosecutor (Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson) to convict the 24 defendants, the brothers tracked down a studio in Babelsberg holding a cache of film evidence. Oral history footage from Budd Schulberg recounting this story, and of a humorous bonding over John Ford’s oeuvre with a Red Army major and amateur film historian stationed at the studio, provides some levity in an otherwise dark film.
The evidence the brothers accumulated was enormous — two lengthy films screened on the first cinema screen ever used in a trial, alongside over 5,000 other exhibits of evidence — and, when depicted here in Filmmakers, is deeply disturbing. Grainy 8mm film shot by Germans during the Lviv pogroms. Jewish men and women dying in the street in the Warsaw Ghetto and sent into mass graves, recorded willingly by the Nazi regime to show to themselves and the world. Bulldozing of emaciated bodies into deep earth. It’s horrifying, then and now. Klotz pairs these clips with contemporary interviews, with one particularly moving with Niklas Frank. Niklas is still gobsmacked that his father, Hans (the Nazi governor of Poland), went to his grave thinking he wasn’t a criminal, even after viewing these films, and will never forgive him for the crimes he committed.
The final twenty minutes tracks Stuart’s work over three years on Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, the official American documentary of the tribunal. Stuart’s film went through eleven rewrites amid disagreements between American and British officials as to the purpose of the documentary: denazification in Germany, or a document for posterity. In the meantime, the Roman Karmen-directed Soviet documentary, The Nuremberg Trials, was released in 1947 with a premiere in Times Square. (Klotz makes sure to show the cheeky “Reds Beat Yanks” headline on the front page of Variety following the release.) Ultimately, Filmmakers notes that Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today would never be seen by postwar American audiences. While it would screen in Stuttgart for German viewers, the US release was canceled amid the Berlin Airlift and the early days of the Cold War. Suddenly, a film depicting the Germans as enemies and the Soviets as allies conflicted with the new narrative.
Filmmakers for the Prosecution starts off as didactic, and in general feels like a feature that could air on PBS or on the History Channel in the days before their turn to Ancient Aliens, albeit with a bit more tension and a welcome personal touch. And to me, that’s okay. The Nuremberg trials, and Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, were both designed to make sure the world didn’t forget the atrocities committed. They were meant to shed light on, in the words of Jackson’s opening statement at trial (quoted in the film), the “sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust…living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power.” That mission is still critical in an era of increased anti-Semitism, platforming of Holocaust denial (even in the face of visual proof of the Third Reich’s crimes), and crimes against humanity committed by regimes both friend and foe to the US today. And that mission is clear in Filmmakers, which I hope is shown far and wide to students and to the public, so the “sinister influences” never return to power.
Following a premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival, Filmmakers for the Prosecution begins its run at the Firehouse, DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film in lower Manhattan on January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Some screenings are planned as double-features with Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today through February 2, before expanding to cities across the US. For more on the Nuremberg Trials, I recommend the resources developed by the Courtroom 600 project
