Best Actor 1961: Spencer Tracy in Judgment At Nuremberg

Spencer Tracy received his eighth nomination for portraying Judge Dan Haywood in Judgment at Nuremberg.

Judge Judge Dan Haywood is an American Judge who is set as the chief justice of the tribunal who sits to judge the Judges of the Nazi regime. Tracy is the actual lead of the film, although he does not get to do all that pointing and yelling that co-nominee Schell gets to do (you can watch Inherit the Wind if you want to see Tracy do that) instead Tracy gives a quieter performance as the presiding Judge.

The film follows him through his time in the trial, and his path reaching basically to his verdict. It is rather interesting because most of the performances have the biggest moments inside the courtroom but Tracy is almost entirely reactive in the courtroom sequences. Tracy's performance is very minute in a lot of these moments though on subsequent rewatches it becomes all the more evident that what Tracy is doing in his performance is showing the way the judge is slowly coming to his final speech. And early on you see a man who is more so than an observer, sometimes frustrated by the hostility in the court, and at other moments the sense of the extreme nature of the horror he must preside over seems to weigh on him. 

Tracy's more active moments come outside of the courtroom. He is very reactive even then. His performance though I think is effective in terms of showing two sides of a man, one being a kind of tourist and the other being a man taking in the weight of the experience of Nazi Germany. His performance does balance this with slightly humorous moments, such as his quiet frustration when being called grandpa by a young German woman, with also the sense of understanding of it all that slowly seems to weigh more on him as the film proceeds. 

So what does his character come to, well he comes to that the men are guilty of their horrible crimes. He says it in a verdict strongly depicted by Tracy, and then reassured once again by Tracy directly to the repentant of Judge Ernest Janning (Burt Lancaster). Tracy does have the right forcefulness in showing the character's belief in justice, but this really just is what occurs at the end. On-rewatch these scenes have only become more powerful. The verdict scene is excellent work from Tracy where you do see the ideal Tracy where he says the words as fact, and in this case the facts have such tremendous power to them. The other being his moment of indignation is calm yet so piercing as he directly reprimands the judge for doing something he should've known was wrong. 

On-rewatch this is one of Tracy's better performances and one that works well within the expectations of the film. Tracy's performance is supposed to be this kind of bedrock foundational idea of someone who believes in the law and must try to comprehend this situation as best he can. He does so in a way that has a natural humanity in it, and for much of it is a man slightly lost in trying to find a way to figure out what all this madness contains. His realization is a calm one by Tracy, but in the end also a very potent and essential one for the film.