Nazis

Movies that depict the history of war criminals on trial will almost always be worth making and watching. These films are edifying (and cathartic) in a way that could almost be considered a public servic and that’s what works best in James Vanderbilt’s “Nuremberg,” about the international tribunal that tried the Nazi high command in the immediate wake of World War II. It’s a drama that is well-intentioned and elucidating despite some missteps.

For his second directorial effort, Vanderbilt, a journeyman writer best known for his “Zodiac” screenplay for David Fincher, adapts “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai, about the curious clinical relationship between Dr. Douglas Kelley, an Army psychiatrist, and former German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the lead-up to the Nuremberg trials.

The film is a two-hander shared by Oscar winners: a formidable Russell Crowe as Göring and a squirrely Rami Malek as Kelley. At the end of the war, Kelley is summoned to an ad-hoc Nazi prison in Luxembourg to evaluate the Nazi commandants. Immediately, he’s intrigued at the thought of sampling so many flavors of narcissism.

It becomes clear that the doctor has his own interests in mind with this unique task as well. At one point while recording notes, in a moment of particularly on-the-nose screenwriting, Kelley verbalizes “Someone could write a book” and off he dashes to the library with his German interpreter, a baby-faced U.S. Army officer named Howie (Leo Woodall), in tow. That book would eventually be published in 1947 as “22 Cells in Nuremberg,” a warning about the possibilities of Nazism in our own country, but no one wants to believe our neighbors can be Nazis until our neighbors are Nazis.

One of the lessons of the Nuremberg trials — and of “Nuremberg” the film — is that Nazis are people too, with the lesson being that human beings are indeed capable of such horrors (the film grinds to an appropriate halt in a crucial moment to simply let the characters and the audience take in devastating concentration camp footage). Human beings, not monsters, were the architects of the Final Solution.

But human beings can also fight against this if they choose to, and the rule of law can prevail if people make the choice to uphold it. The Nuremberg trials start because Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon) doesn’t let anything so inconvenient as a logistical international legal nightmare stop him from doing what’s right.

Kelley’s motivations are less altruistic. He is fascinated by these men and their pathologies, particularly the disarming Göring, and in the name of science the doctor dives headlong into a deeper relationship with his patient than he should, eventually ferrying letters back and forth between Göring and his wife and daughter, still in hiding. He finds that Göring is just a man — a megalomaniacal, arrogant and manipulative man, but just a man. That makes the genocide that he helped to plan and execute that much harder to swallow.

Crowe has a planet-sized gravitational force on screen that he lends to the outsize Göring and Shannon possesses the same weight. A climactic scene between these two actors in which Jackson cross-examines Göring is a riveting piece of courtroom drama. Malek’s energy is unsettled, his character always unpredictable. He and Crowe are interesting but unbalanced together.

Vanderbilt strives to imbue “Nuremberg” with a retro appeal that sometimes feels misplaced. John Slattery, as the colonel in charge of the prison, throws some sauce on his snappy patter that harks back to old movies from the 1940s, but the film has been color-corrected into a dull, desaturated gray. It’s a stylistic choice to give the film the essence of a faded vintage photograph, but it’s also ugly as sin.

Vanderbilt struggles to find a tone and clutters the film with extra story lines to diminishing results. Howie’s personal history (based on a true story) is deeply affecting and Woodall sells it beautifully. But then there are the underwritten female characters: a saucy journalist (Lydia Peckham) who gets Kelley drunk to draw out his secrets for a scoop, and Justice Jackson’s legal clerk (Wrenn Schmidt) who clucks and tsks her way through the trial, serving only as the person to whom Jackson can articulate his thoughts. Their names are scarcely uttered during the film and their barely-there inclusion feels almost offensive.

So while the subject matter makes “Nuremberg” worth the watch, the film itself is a mixed bag, with some towering performances (Crowe and Shannon) and some poor ones. It manages to eke out its message in the eleventh hour, but it feels too little too late in our cultural moment, despite its evergreen importance. If the film is intended to be a canary in a coal mine, that bird has long since expired.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Aug. 27 (UPI) — A painting looted by Nazis from a Jewish Art dealer 80 years ago has been seen on the website of an estate agent selling a house in Argentina.

The painting Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the late baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi was seen in a photo hanging above a sofa in the living room of a house in a seaside town near Buenos Aires.

The Dutch newspaper AD reported that the painting is featured in a database of lost art.

“There is no reason to think this could be a copy,” said Annelies Kool and Perry Schrier of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, who reviewed the images for AD.

The artwork is among hundreds looted from an art dealer who helped Jews escape during the war, Jacques Goudstiker.

More than 1,100 paintings were brought up in a sale by senior Nazis after he died after falling in the hold of the vessel and breaking his neck.

After World War II, some works had been recovered in Germany, but Portrait of a Lady was not among those.

AD’s investigation found wartime documents suggesting the painting was in possession of Friedrich Kaidgen, an SS officer and senior financial aide to Goring.

Kadieng died in 1979, and as a U.S. file seen by AD said he “Appears to possess substantial assets, could still be of value to us”.

The paper noted it made efforts to speak to his two daughters about the missing artworks. A reporter was dispatched to knock on doors where they believed someone was home, but no one opened the door.

“There was certainly someone at home; we saw a shadow moving in the corridor, but no one opened,” the journalist, Peter Schouten, reported.

AD said all attempts to speak to the sisters since finding the photo had failed, with one reportedly telling the paper: “I don’t know what information you want from me, and I don’t know what painting you are talking about.”

Two British icons of the screen finally join forces in the new period drama Outrageous, releasing this week on U and U&Drama

Outrageous star James Purefoy has opened up about working with his long-time friend Anna Chancellor for the first time ever in the upcoming period drama.

This scandalous series coming this week on U and U&Drama takes viewers back to the 1930s when the shadow of World War II was beginning to loom.

While Nancy Mitford (played by Bessie Carter) becomes a reputable writer, her sisters follow drastically different career paths.

Under the stern eyes of their parents, David Freeman-Mitford aka ‘Farve’ (Purefoy) and Sydney Bowles aka ‘Muv’ (Chancellor), the family is catapulted into notoriety as the sisters become rebels, socialites and even rub shoulders with fascists.

Speaking to Reach at Outrageous’ London premiere, Purefoy explained his co-star has been a dear friend for years despite never sharing the screen.

“She’s an amazing actress,” he said. “She’s the godmother to my eldest child, I’ve known her 35 years and this is the first time I’ve worked with her.

“It was just a joy working with a really old friend because there’s a lot of shorthand there and it was a very easy fit for us.

“It was just an enormous pleasure every single day.”

Throughout the six-part drama, the Mitford patriarch struggles to keep his foothold in high society following a substantial loss during the Wall Street Crash.

Although he attempts to rule his household with an iron fist, his anarchic daughters have other ideas.

As Britain faced economic turmoil in the years preceding the war, his daughters Diana (Joanna Vanderham) and Unity (Shannon Watson) blindly swear allegiance to the British Union of Fascists.

Meanwhile, Muv is simply desperate for her daughters to find good husbands during an era when family connections meant everything.

“The thing about Anna is she’s so curious about everybody and everything,” Purefoy added.

“She will talk to anybody about anything. And is always interested, and that’s what makes her such a good actress.”

This isn’t the first time Purefoy and Chancellor have been involved in the same project, however.

Chancellor portrayed a fascist herself, the villainous Dr. Frances Gaunt, in the popular Batman prequel series Pennyworth, starring Jack Bannon as the nocturnal hero’s future butler Alfred.

Despite not sharing scenes together, Purefoy also had a major role in the Epix and HBO Max series, playing Captain Gulliver ‘Gully’ Troy, aka Captain Blighty, in the second and third seasons.

As two legendary stars of the British stage and screen, don’t miss the chance to see Purefoy and Chancellor as married aristocrats in this scandalous new drama that truly lives up to its title.

Outrageous premieres Thursday, 19th June on U, U&Drama and BritBox.