Media interest in the case was intense , though mostly it focused on the verdict . While the trial was in progress , most newspapers found the proceedings too tedious and too complicated to follow , not least because they involved extensive documentation in German , and editors were anxious not to say too much in case Irving won . With the verdict in their hand – a detailed 350-page ruling on the case by the judge – they could go to town and call Irving a liar and a cheat . The massive press and media coverage provided an extensive lesson for the public in the history of the Holocaust and the dishonesty of those who denied it . Although the trial was about what Irving had written in his study and said on his speaking tours and not what happened at Auschwitz and elsewhere during the war , the implications were unavoidable . It was a crushing defeat for Holocaust denial .
Small wonder , then , that television directors and filmmakers began to think about how to put it onto the screen . The first attempt , Holocaust on Trial , was made for PBS in America while the trial was in progress , using dramatizations of the daily trial transcripts , archive footage , and ‘ talking heads ’, i . e . historians of the Holocaust , such as Richard Overy and David Cesarani . It was very much instant history , made without a great deal of reflection . A second television film , History on Trial , made for BBC-2 , was more successful , though it followed very much the same formula . Some care was taken to ensure the actors roughly resembled the reallife people they played . I was phoned up by the production team in advance , for example , and asked about my height and weight , my age and the colour of my hair ). I was played by the British actor Michael Kitchen , whom I encountered by chance in a London café a few months later (‘ I hope I played you to your satisfaction ’, he said : ‘ You played me far better than I played myself ’, I replied : ‘ You could rehearse the lines , while I only had one go at delivering them when I was in the witness box ’).
The documentary style , however , would not do for a commercial movie to be shown in cinemas . This had to be a full-scale dramatization , and this is where the trouble began . It is notoriously difficult to make a courtroom drama work , particularly after the success of 1954 ’ s Twelve Angry Men – and the Irving-Lipstadt trial hadn ’ t even had a jury to enliven the proceedings . An attempt was made by Sir Ridley Scott , a leading Hollywood director , with huge successes such as the Alien franchise to his name . Scott engaged Sir Ronald Harwood , an experienced playwright and screenwriter to produce a screenplay . Harwood had won an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist , a Holocaust drama , and seemed the right man for the job . But the screenplay he produced was still too much of a courtroom drama for Scott , who passed it over to Nicholas Meyer , a Hollywood ‘ script doctor ’, novelist and film director , to see if it could be improved . It seems that it could not , at least not to Scott ’ s satisfaction , so it joined the long list of unrealized projects gathering dust on the shelves of Hollywood ’ s movie producers .
The problem was that a movie needs a character or characters for the audience to identify with , and there just wasn ’ t one . It was only when Deborah Lipstadt published her own , very personal account of the trial in 2005 that one became available : the defendant herself . The case was picked up by Sir David Hare , an experienced playwright , film and theatre director and twice-Oscar-nominated screenwriter . Hare had long been interested in the Nazi period and the Holocaust , and he began adapting Lipstadt ’ s memoir History on Trial : My Day in Court with David Irving , for the screen . As part of the preparation , he interviewed most of the major players , including myself . In a two-hour interview in my Cambridge office , accompanied by a note-taker , he went over the case with me , always looking for an interesting angle and colourful details . As he left my office , he turned to me and remarked : ‘ Everyone I ’ ve talked to sees the case differently ’. This led me to believe he was considering an approach to Kurosawa ’ s classic film Rashomon , where each character has a radically different memory of a crime they have witnessed or participated in .
Given his many other commitments , it is not surprising that it took Hare several years to complete the project , generate the funds needed to carry it through , get a movie company to take it on , and
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Observing Memories Issue 5