MovieChat Forums > QB VII (1974) Discussion > The Verdict (Spoilers)

The Verdict (Spoilers)

posted 13 years ago by croak-1
4 replies | jump to latest

Personally, I think the jury was wrong in coming up with that verdict - or rather, with the amount of damages.

Cady's attorneys couldn't prove that Kelno performed thousands of operations on Jews, as Cady claimed in his book and so it was still damaging to Kelno's reputation. Therefore, Kelno should have been paid more than just that small amount.

OT - Did anyone else catch the parallel story-line at the end where both of them end up losing their sons? (Although, I personally feel Cady deserved to lose his, since he was such a lousy father... and husband, the arrogant, egotistical ass.)

[–] flnyira 13 years ago

I don't think you get it. The one record they could find indicated that even though there were fewer surgeries than Cady claimed, if all the others had been found they would have added up to many more operations. In addition, the mere fact that Kelno had performed ANY such "surgeries" was enough to show that he had really not been defamed at all; the finding for Kelno was based on the fact that they could only prove the smaller amount of operations than claimed in the book. However, Kelno was a Nazi collaberator and just by operating on ONE person as a punishment to assist the Nazi's showed the defamation was insignificant.
As to the two men losing their sons, yes, Cady had been a lousy father early on, but after losing his own father he clearly made amends with his own son, and the loss was devastating. As for Kelno, he was a liar and an anti-semite who clearly had lied to his own family and was not nearly the man he claimed to be, and deserved to lose his son's respect and love. The book makes this more obvious, in the way Kelno is always calling anyone who is even just to his mind against him a Communist or a Jew. He is a gifted doctor, but a horrible human being.

[–] bell-simone 12 years ago

The scene where Cady stands outside QBVII & reads the telegram, saying his son is dead, and then the camera pans over to Kelno & wife entering the court building, is one of the most incredible scenes in a movie full of them.

www.peterstrauss.net

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] hodapp 8 years ago

Somewhere in our 3,000 books, we have an original edition of Exodus in hardcover with the "offending" paragraph, as well as a later paperback with it excised. After seeing the original running of QBVII, I went looking through the books until I found the change and the doctor's real name.

A few years later, I was doing research in the library at the University of Southern California. I was in the stacks, and completely by accident, my eye fell on a volume that was called something like Court Transcripts of Dering v Uris (1964). Recognizing it, I pulled it off the shelf, sat on the floor, and read most of it during the course of the afternoon. QBVII certainly embellished the drama that wrapped around the case and the fictionalized players, but the core of the courtroom scenes followed the actual trial very closely.

This miniseries was one of the finest ever made, right down to the Goldsmith score. - and it may have been the first of that format. Such a shame that so much truly great work from those days has just disappeared, since HDTV makes them look dated now. With so damn many idiotic stations on cable and with streaming options all desperate for programming, I'm astonished that no one has provided a safe haven to resurrect these outstanding productions.