ABSTRACT
In examining documentaries made about the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, my interest is in exploring the role that film plays in transforming historic trials into historical events. In so doing, I want to consider how trials, staged to define the terms of responsible remembrance, have themselves become digested into collective memory. The Eichmann trial provides an exemplary subject for such a study inasmuch as the trial marked an unprecedented intrusion of television-video technology into a legal setting. As is well known, Capital Cities, an American film and television company, agreed to film the Eichmann trial in its entirety. The three-judge panel that presided over the case, concerned that the presence of movie cameras might diminish the dignity of a proceeding already troubled by the spectre of the carnivalesque — the zoo-like glass booth designed to protect the defendant, the reconverted theatre in which the trial was staged — granted permission to Capital, but only after the production company convinced the tribunal that its four hidden cameras and newly developed sound-dampened equipment would not disturb the proceeding. In the pre-trial hearing to consider the feasibility of filming, Capital surprised the judges by revealing that the hearing itself had been filmed using the very stealth technology that would be used at trial (Pearlman, 1963). Capital also decided to use another new technology, video tape, which could be quickly copied and distributed to broadcasting outlets around the globe. Capital did this all as a public service, offering copies to broadcasters at no profit and supplying the court with a complete set at no cost. And so the Eichmann proceeding became the first televised trial. Long before Court TV, long before OJ, there was Eichmann. 1
