At the end, it appears that Goldman is not a Nazi or a war criminal after all; he falsified the dental records which the Israelis used to identify him to bring about the trial. When the deception is revealed by the Israeli prosecutor, Goldman is left standing in the trial court's bulletproof glass box, a broken man. The stress shatters his mental health and he becomes catatonic. He then relives in his mind a Nazi firing squad execution and dies as those in the courtroom whisper the Jewish prayer, "Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad" "("The LORD is our God, the LORD is one")." Maximilian Schell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance. Edward Anhalt was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium for his screenplay. Although film was widely reviewed on its release, few reviews remain on the internet in any accessible form. (An ad for the film consisting of numerous review quotes can easily be found online by doing an image search.) Roger Ebert wrote "Arthur Hiller's film for the AFT is a very good one, although it suffers from one basic problem. By its very nature, film tends to be a realistic medium, photographing the outsides of real world. Robert Shaw's play, even as adapted and made somewhat more realistic by Edward Anhalt, is nevertheless a symbolic and mannered one". Raymond Benson wrote in 2009, "The film is a riveting, first-rate drama featuring an Oscar-nominated, tour-de-force performance by Schell". The film was released as a region 1 DVD in 2003 and again in 2008. A Blu-ray version was released in the US in 2017.