Probably the strangest film to come from any of the combatants in World War II, doubly so as it's the work of the director of 'All Quiet on the Western Front"; here adopting a dreamlike stylisation rather his usual gritty realism.
Although plainly inspired by the Moscow show trials of the thirties, in retrospect it's ironic that the defendants in the actual Tokyo trials were the Japanese themselves. With hindsight the use of film as evidence in court anticipates what happened at Nuremberg, the maltreatment and brainwashing of prisoners what happened in Cold War Eastern Europe, the trial of the airmen what happened to Gary Powers and the crew of the Pueblo and possibly the final reckoning currently being anticipated in store for Putin for his activities in Ukraine. (A further irony is that Torben Meyer who in 1961 played one of the defendants in 'Judgement at Nuremberg' here appears as a representative of the Swiss Red Cross.)
Although plainly inspired by the Moscow show trials of the thirties, in retrospect it's ironic that the defendants in the actual Tokyo trials were the Japanese themselves. With hindsight the use of film as evidence in court anticipates what happened at Nuremberg, the maltreatment and brainwashing of prisoners what happened in Cold War Eastern Europe, the trial of the airmen what happened to Gary Powers and the crew of the Pueblo and possibly the final reckoning currently being anticipated in store for Putin for his activities in Ukraine. (A further irony is that Torben Meyer who in 1961 played one of the defendants in 'Judgement at Nuremberg' here appears as a representative of the Swiss Red Cross.)