Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Judgment at Nuremberg

Spencer Tracy has appeared in a number of socially responsible films in the course of his vast career, but few films could hold a candle to Judgment at Nuremberg in terms of quality, signification and emotional investment. The film centers around one particular trial of four judges in the days following World War II and leading up to the start of the Cold War. A noble, electorally-defeated judge (Tracy) is joined by two other high minded jurists to hear testimony and determine the guilt or innocence of these German nationals.

Burt Lancaster has the central role of the four defendants. Lancaster has been better in many roles, but his graceful nobility in the face of life imprisonment is noteworthy. A young Maximilian Schell plays the defense lawyer who interjects himself into the case to Janning’s (Lancaster) frustration. Schell delivers an astounding performance, one that defines his entire career. Schell rightly won the Oscar for this role. Other notable names in the case include Richard Widmark as the prosecuting attorney and Judy Garland as the middle-aged German whose youthful dalliance with an older Jew led to one of the defining cases highlighted in the film and providing a central crucible for the justices, attorneys and defendants to navigate through. Marlene Dietrich has a pivotal role as the widowed woman in whose house Tracy’s character is residing. Another witness, played my Montgomery Clift, was a mentally deficient subject of forced sterilization that Clift played excellently. These latter four give solid performances marking one of a handful of quality elements of the film.

Examining the complicity the judges had in sentencing various Jews and other Germans to concentration camps or forced sterilization, the deepest concept at work here is whether using the defense that you were only doing it to protect your country removed all culpability for the crimes you enabled. While I’ll leave the outcome of the trial to those who’ve not seen the film, I have found few films courtroom dramas that stand equitably with this film. Nuremberg isn’t an easy film to take sides on. There are points, counterpoints and various intersections of these concepts that crisscross through the three hours, but in the end your own thoughts about the rule of law and the ability for anyone to stand up to the state or go along with its goals reflect more on your character than whether you liked or admired the film.

Battleship Potemkin

One of the key films in the silent era, Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece Battleship Potemkin is rightfully hailed as one of the most influential in history. Telling the story of a battleship crew who sympathizes with the emerging revolutionaries on the mainland and their attempts to stand up to the reproachful regime under which they serve. Told in a series of short chapters spanning just over an hour, the film establishes many of the most important editing techniques presently used in modern cinema.

While the entire film effectively blends long, medium and close-up shots to create a sense of tension and balance, the segment taking place on the Stairs of Odessa is perhaps the most poignant and decisively superior scenes in the entire production. After the citizens of Odessa rise to support the noble Battleship Potemkin and its struggles for fairness, the Russian state military arrives and begins firing into the crowd, pressing down on them from the top of the stairs, killing any who would stand in their way. A wave of brutality and symbolism, no one is safe from their bullets: men, women and children die in equal measure. The body count would rival that in any modern film, yet the imagery is so stark and compelling that except for the frequent jump cuts due to missing frames of film, you might even mistake it for a modern work.

Battleship Potemkin may tell the story of the Russian Revolution in rich, intriguing detail, but the story is also a symbolic of the revolution of filmmaking that would follow, not only with the advancement of sound two years later, but the approach of color. The film even employs an old technique of hand-tinting to mark the rising red flag of the revolution that would one day become the background for another flag, one that would have an entirely new meaning, one which Eisenstein could never have foreseen and might have even been frustrated about. It’s a brilliant piece of cinematic history that deserves to be seen even if only as a stepping stone in the evolutionary pool of filmmaking.

Mirror Mirror

How do you follow up a visually stunning film like The Cell? Tarsem Singh (whose also gone by the single name moniker Tarsem as well as his full given name Tarsem Singh Dhandwar) went first to the critically uneven The Fall then the relatively dull Immortals. Now, he’s tackled his first true comedy, a re-imagining of the classic story of Snow White. While the Disney version diverts strongly from the Grimm Brothers story on which its based, most audiences are familiar with the concepts presented therein. The screenplay by Melisa Wallack and Jason Keller sticks closely to the original story while developing inventive ideas to stretch the story into a more socio-political commentary admonishing the rich who build themselves on the backs of the poor and admonishing the vain and celebrating the meek.

Snow White here is portrayed by 22-year-old Lily Collins whose guest appearance on the new series 90210 led to a small role in The Blind Side and on to blockbuster wannabes Priest and Abduction. Here, she proves she has leading actress material, creating what I believe will be the better Snow White of this year’s competing adaptations. This film is decidedly more upbeat and amusing than the action-oriented Snow White and the Huntsman later this Summer, which gives Collins the opportunity to laugh, weep and fight with equal dexterity. She does admirably in spite of facing off with one of our more recognized and dominating acting talents Julia Roberts. Roberts place Snow’s wicked stepmother whose selfish and reprehensible sensibilities have stolen the mirth from the land Snow’s father had nurtured. Roberts looks like she’s having the time of her life, but relies too often on standard villainous traits preventing her from seeming multi-dimensional.

Armie Hammer gives a wonderfully funny performance as Prince Alcott, the man whom the queen wishes to marry but who is in love with the young, beautiful Snow White. Hammer seems a bit too old to be playing love interest to the in-film 18-year-old Snow White, but in reality is only three years older than Collins. Nathan Lane hams it up as the boot-licking lackey of the queen and the talented group of actors they got to play the seven dwarfs are equally engaging: Jordan Prentice, Mark Povinelli, Joe Gnoffo, Danny Woodburn, Sebastian Saraceno, Martin Klebba and Ronald Lee Clark.

The film also has luscious costume design by the late Eiko Ishioka as well as some fairly strong art direction and an energetic if oddly placed closing dance number performed by Collins and company called “I Believe in Love.” Overall, the film is a wonderful diversion at the theater, though it lacks the substance to transcend gentle family fun and become something more noteworthy.