The Memory of Justice

An investigation of the impact of the Nuremberg trials on the German conscience, and a study of the implications of the moral and legal principles established there for events like Hiroshima and Vietnam, The Memory of Justice operates by steadily drawing the viewer into a situation that is forever expanding, as new ramifications and contexts are found by Ophüls in the course of his interviews and in the use he makes of library footage. The film is, accordingly, as important for its method of investigation as for the facts it reveals. In contrast to the tight narrative and fixed viewpoint of the run-of-the-mill TV documentary, Ophüls' film is so structured as to force the viewer to involve himself in the arguments presented in the actual process of watching the film, thus transforming a passive viewing into an active reading. (Originally broadcast in two parts, 'Nuremberg and the Germans' and 'Nuremberg and Other Places'.