“Schindler’s List” won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and director, and turned Steven Spielberg from a popular filmmaker (whose “Jurassic Park” was released the same year) into a more serious one. But it remains a quintessential problem movie, one that raised questions about genocide, historical memory and cinematic representation that remain, to this day, unresolved.
Twenty-five years after its initial release, Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” returns to theaters this week with digitally remastered picture and sound.
An epic-length adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s historical novel, the Universal film arrived in 1993 as not just a worthy cause, but a historical phenomenon. Released just a few months after the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it was poised to address a serious gap in historical representation. It was both a critical success and a popular one; made on a $22 million budget, it grossed $321.2 million worldwide.
“I think ‘Schindler’s List’ will wind up being so much more important than a movie,” said Walt Disney Studios then-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg at the time. “I don’t want to burden the movie too much, but I think it will bring peace on earth, good will to men. Enough of the right people will see it that it will actually set the course of human affairs.”
We are clearly not living in a world defined by Spielberg’s humanism, but the film remains a kind of litmus test for Hollywood moviemaking, asking whether it’s morally defensible to dramatize unspeakable horror and trauma via the language of mass entertainment.
The most obvious and durable critique of “Schindler’s List” is that the highest-profile Holocaust movie ever made (one designed to be used as an educational tool) is focused on a statistical anomaly – the Nazi who has a change of heart. Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is a war profiteer and bon vivant who initially sees Jews as cheap labor for his enamelware factory, but eventually, for reasons that remain somewhat opaque, decides to offer them a safe haven from certain death.
It’s a drama that invokes the Great Man theory of history, in which grand elements of fate become a matter of individual choice. It tells the story of the 6 million murdered by focusing on the 1,200 whom Schindler saved and, more precisely, on the savior himself.
As journalist Philip Gourevitch wrote in a pointed dissent in 1993,”The mindless critical hyperbole which has greeted ‘Schindler’s List’ suggests that powerful spectacle continues to be more beguiling than human and historical authenticity -- and that the psychology of the Nazis is a bigger draw than the civilization of the people they murdered.”
Far from a somber, forbidding museum piece, “Schindler’s List” uses all the tricks of Spielberg’s trade. It is perhaps inappropriately beautiful; Janusz Kaminski’s Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography alternates between wide-angle, deep-focus mise en scene and hand-held documentary-style realism, and he often lights Neeson like he was Humphrey Bogart. Despite its subject matter, the movie is never afraid of its own movie-ness. As a drama, the film is manipulative, but every scene contains something indelible.
It’s certainly a defensible approach, as film scholar Annette Insdorf said when it was released. “Oskar Schindler himself was a larger-than-life figure, who did indeed save over 1,100 Jews,” Insdorf said. “How? By manipulation. By a showmanship (not unlike Spielberg’s) that knows -- and plays -- its audience, but in the service of a deeper cause.”
According to Emory University Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, whose legal battle against a Holocaust denier was dramatized in the film “Denial,” Spielberg’s film was not made for those who had a strong sense of historical memory. “We were not the audience,” Lipstadt said in a recent interview. “It was the general public.”
She continues: “Is it the best depiction of the Holocaust in film? I don’t know. But did it reach a tremendous number of people who would otherwise not have been reached? Did it bring the story to countless people who no other filmmaker would have been able to reach? There is no question. So in terms of its impact, it certainly deserves its iconic status.”
Spielberg declined an interview for this piece, but at a recent 25th anniversary screening of the film, he said: “I have never felt, since ‘Schindler’s List,’ the kind of pride and satisfaction and sense of real, meaningful accomplishment. I haven’t felt that in any film post-‘Schindler’s List.’”
For the critic J. Hoberman, “Schindler’s List” has always been a problematic film. “He made a feel-good movie about the ultimate feel-bad experience,” he said. In 1994, in response to the film’s seemingly universal acclaim, Hoberman convened a symposium in the Village Voice for skeptical critics, academics and artists to wrestle with their complicated responses.
I have never felt, since ‘Schindler’s List,’ the kind of pride and satisfaction and sense of real, meaningful accomplishment.
— Steven Spielberg
For example, the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs argued that the movie, which largely focuses on Schindler’s relationships with his introverted Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) and the brutal Nazi commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), is all “about styles of manhood and how one deals with one’s lessers. Jews function as background and pawns of this dramatic contest.”
Hoberman, like many others, considers Claude Lanzmann’s 10-hour documentary, “Shoah,” to be the most cinematically and morally rigorous film ever made on the Holocaust. A series of direct interviews with witnesses — which include perpetrators and survivors of the death camps — Lanzmann’s film, shot in color, makes no attempt to re-create the past. Instead, the film is structured around a series of absences, forcing the viewer to imagine the horrors oneself.
“It’s devastating,” Hoberman says. “Because of Lanzmann’s strategy, where you have to imagine this yourself, you live it in a way you don’t when you’re watching it transformed into narratives, with characters and resolution. I suppose it’s utopian to imagine that people would learn from ‘Shoah’ rather than ‘Schindler’s List,’ but … I thought it was really unfortunate.”
Appreciation: Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ changed our understanding of the Holocaust — and altered documentary filmmaking »
Though I too find “Shoah” to be a monumental and essential experience, I am ultimately grateful for the existence of Spielberg’s film. “Schindler’s List” may not have brought peace on earth, but the phenomenon of the film helped ensure the Holocaust would remain a matter of public consciousness and provided a boon to historians. After the film, Spielberg established the USC Shoah Foundation, which has collected the testimonies of more than 55,000 Holocaust survivors.
As a movie made by a celebrated Jewish artist, it gave other filmmakers permission to treat the Holocaust as a subject of legitimate cinematic inquiry. Films as stylistically varied as Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and László Nemes’ “Son of Saul” all owe Spielberg a debt.
There are moments when I wish Spielberg had been gutsier, more willing to alienate his audience and gesture toward what is unrepresentable — and unspeakable. Late in the film, at the end of his climactic speech on the factory floor, Schindler asks for three minutes of silence to honor the memory of the countless victims. But Spielberg allows the silence to play out for less than 10 seconds before a rabbi begins intoning the kaddish .
Still, Lipstadt suggests, it is perhaps the only possible mass-market movie about the Holocaust. “Does it compare to a Lanzmann film? Of course not. Spielberg’s objective was to make a film that would reach millions, and he succeeded — without unduly cheapening the story.”
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December 15, 1993 Review/Film: "Schindler's List": Imagining the Holocaust to Remember It By JANET MASLIN here is a real photographic record of some of the people and places depicted in "Schindler's List," and it has a haunting history. Raimund Titsch, an Austrian Catholic who managed a uniform factory within the Plaszow labor camp in Poland, surreptitiously took pictures of what he saw. Fearful of having the pictures developed, he hid his film in a steel box, which he buried in a park outside Vienna and then did not disturb for nearly 20 years. Although it was sold secretly by Titsch when he was terminally ill, the film remained undeveloped until after his death. The pictures that emerged, like so many visual representations of the Holocaust, are tragic, ghostly and remote. The horrors of the Holocaust are often viewed from a similar distance, filtered through memory or insulated by grief and recrimination. Documented exhaustively or dramatized in terms by now dangerously familiar, the Holocaust threatens to become unimaginable precisely because it has been imagined so fully. But the film "Schindler's List," directed with fury and immediacy by a profoundly surprising Steven Spielberg , presents the subject as if discovering it anew. TEXT: "Schindler's List" brings a pre-eminent pop mastermind together with a story that demands the deepest reserves of courage and passion. Rising brilliantly to the challenge of this material and displaying an electrifying creative intelligence, Mr. Spielberg has made sure that neither he nor the Holocaust will ever be thought of in the same way again. With every frame, he demonstrates the power of the film maker to distill complex events into fiercely indelible images. "Schindler's List" begins with the sight of Jewish prayer candles burning down to leave only wisps of smoke, and there can be no purer evocation of the Holocaust than that. A deserted street littered with the suitcases of those who have just been rounded up and taken away. The look on the face of a captive Jewish jeweler as he is tossed a handful of human teeth to mine for fillings. A snowy sky that proves to be raining ashes. The panic of a prisoner unable to find his identity papers while he is screamed at by an armed soldier, a man with an obviously dangerous temper. These visceral scenes, and countless others like them, invite empathy as surely as Mr. Spielberg once made viewers wish E.T. would get well again. But this time his emphasis is on the coolly Kafkaesque aspects of an authoritarian nightmare. Drawing upon the best of his storytelling talents, Mr. Spielberg has made "Schindler's List" an experience that is no less enveloping than his earlier works of pure entertainment. Dark, sobering and also invigoratingly dramatic, "Schindler's List" will make terrifying sense to anyone, anywhere. The big man at the center of this film is Oskar Schindler, a Catholic businessman from the Sudetenland who came to occupied Poland to reap the spoils of war. (You can be sure this is not the last time the words "Oscar" and "Schindler" will be heard together.) Schindler is also something of a cipher, just as he was for Thomas Keneally, whose 1982 book, "Schindler's List," marked a daring synthesis of fiction and fact. Reconstructing the facts of Schindler's life to fit the format of a novel, Mr. Keneally could only draw upon the memories of those who owed their lives to the man's unexpected heroism. Compiling these accounts (in a book that included some of the Titsch photographs), Mr. Keneally told "the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms." The great strength of Mr. Keneally's book, and now of Mr. Spielberg 's film, lies precisely in this pragmatism. Knowing only the particulars of Schindler's behavior, the audience is drawn into wondering about his higher motives, about the experiences that transformed a casual profiteer into a selfless hero. Schindler's story becomes much more involving than a tale of more conventional courage might be, just as Mr. Spielberg 's use of unfamiliar actors to play Jewish prisoners makes it hard to view them as stock movie characters (even when the real events that befall these people threaten to do just that). The prisoners' stories come straight from Mr. Keneally's factual account, which is beautifully recapitulated by Steven Zaillian's screenplay. Oskar Schindler, played with mesmerizing authority by Liam Neeson, is unmistakably larger than life, with the panache of an old-time movie star. (The real Schindler was said to resemble George Sanders and Curt Jurgens.) From its first glimpse of Oskar as he dresses for a typically flamboyant evening socializing with German officers -- and even from the way his hand appears, nonchalantly holding a cigarette and a bribe -- the film studies him with rapt attention. Mr. Neeson, captured so glamorously by Janusz Kaminiski's richly versatile black-and-white cinematography, presents Oskar as an amalgam of canny opportunism and supreme, well-warranted confidence. Mr. Spielberg does not have to underscore the contrast between Oskar's life of privilege and the hardships of his Jewish employees. Taking over a kitchenware factory in Cracow and benefiting from Jewish slave labor, Oskar at first is no hero. During a deft, seamless section of the film that depicts the setting up of this business operation, Oskar is seen happily occupying an apartment from which a wealthy Jewish couple has just been evicted. Meanwhile, the film's Jews are relegated to the Cracow ghetto. After the ghetto is evacuated and shut down, they are sent to Plaszow, which is overseen by a coolly brutal SS commandant named Amon Goeth. Goeth, played fascinatingly by the English stage actor Ralph Fiennes, is the film's most sobering creation. The third of its spectacularly fine performances comes from Ben Kingsley as the reserved, wary Jewish accountant who becomes Oskar's trusted business manager, and who at one point has been rounded up by Nazi officers before Oskar saves him. "What if I got here five minutes later?" Oskar asks angrily, with the self-interest that keeps this story so startling. "Then where would I be?" As the glossy, voluptuous look of Oskar's sequences gives way to a stark documentary-style account of the Jews' experience, "Schindler's List" witnesses a pivotal transformation. Oskar and a girlfriend, on horseback, watch from a hilltop as the ghetto is evacuated, and the image of a little girl in red seems to crystallize Oskar's horror. But there is a more telling sequence later on, when Oskar is briefly arrested for having kissed a young Jewish woman during a party at his factory. Kissing women is, for Oskar, the most natural act in the world. And he is stunned to find it forbidden on racial grounds. All at once, he understands how murderous and irrational the world has become, and why no prisoners can be safe without the intervention of an Oskar Schindler. The real Schindler saved more than a thousand Jewish workers by sheltering them in his factory, and even accomplished the unimaginable feat of rescuing some of them from Auschwitz. This film's moving coda, a full-color sequence, offers an unforgettable testimonial to Schindler's achievement. The tension in "Schindler's List" comes, of course, from the omnipresent threat of violence. But here again, Mr. Spielberg departs from the familiar. The film's violent acts are relatively few, considering its subject matter, and are staged without the blatant sadism that might be expected. Goeth's hobby of playing sniper, casually targeting his prisoners with a high-powered rifle, is presented so matter-of-factly that it becomes much more terrible than it would be if given more lingering attention. Mr. Spielberg knows well how to make such events truly shocking, and how to catch his audience off guard. Most of these shootings are seen from a great distance, and occur unexpectedly. When it appears that the film is leading up to the point-blank execution of a rabbi, the director has something else in store. Goeth's lordly balcony, which overlooks the film's vast labor-camp set, presents an extraordinary set of visual possibilities, and Mr. Spielberg marshals them most compellingly. But the presence of huge crowds and an immense setting also plays to this director's weakness for staging effects en masse. "Schindler's List" falters only when the crowd of prisoners is reduced to a uniform entity, so that events no longer have the tumultuous variety of real life. This effect is most noticeable in Schindler's last scene, the film's only major misstep, as a throng listens silently to Oskar's overwrought farewell. In a film that moves swiftly and urgently through its three-hour running time, this stagey ending -- plus a few touches of fundamentally false uplift, most notably in a sequence at Auschwitz -- amounts to a very small failing. Among the many outstanding elements that contribute to "Schindler's List," Michael Kahn's nimble editing deserves special mention. So does the production design by Allan Starski, which finds just the right balance between realism and drama. John Williams's music has a somber, understated loveliness. The soundtrack becomes piercingly beautiful as Itzhak Perlman's violin solos occasionally augment the score. It should be noted, if only in passing, that Mr. Spielberg has this year delivered the most astounding one-two punch in the history of American cinema. "Jurassic Park," now closing in on billion-dollar grosses, is the biggest movie moneymaker of all time. "Schindler's List," destined to have a permanent place in memory, will earn something better. "Schindler's List" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes violence and graphic nudity. Return to the Books Home Page
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In this movie, the best he has ever made, Spielberg treats the fact of the Holocaust and the miracle of Schindler's feat without the easy formulas of fiction. The movie is 184 minutes long, and like all great movies, it seems too short. It begins with Schindler ( Liam Neeson ), a tall, strong man with an intimidating physical presence.
Drama. ‧ 1993. Roger Ebert. June 24, 2001. 7 min read. We are republishing this review in honor of the 10th anniversary of the passing of Roger Ebert. Read why one of our contributors chose this review here. "Schindler's List" is described as a film about the Holocaust, but the Holocaust supplies the field for the story, rather than the ...
Watch it for the brilliant storytelling, great acting, and its message that one person can make a difference in the face of evil. While Schindler's List is a brilliant film, its three-plus hour running time and true-to-life grisly violence make it mostly a film for adults. If you have a particularly mature teen, share this film with him and ...
Itzhak Stern. Ralph Fiennes. Amon Goeth. Caroline Goodall. Emilie Schindler. Jonathan Segal. Poldek Pfefferberg. Schindler's List: Official Clip - That's Oskar Schindler. Schindler's List ...
This film's moving coda, a full-color sequence, offers an unforgettable testimonial to Schindler's achievement. The tension in "Schindler's List" comes, of course, from the omnipresent threat of ...
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 5, 2022. Quentin Falk Sunday Mirror (UK) Steven Spielberg's triumphant Schindler's List is a remarkable and moving memorial to an historical Holocaust. It ...
MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 195 MIN. With: Oskar Schindler - Liam Neeson Itzhak Stern - Ben Kingsley Amon Goeth - Ralph Fiennes Emilie Schindler - Caroline Goodall Poldek Pfefferberg - Jonathan ...
Released thirty years ago last month, "Schindler's List" went on to become a genuine blockbuster, finishing fourth at the international box office for 1993 (behind only "Jurassic Park," "Mrs. Doubtfire," and "The Fugitive"). It also became an Oscar juggernaut, with 12 nominations and seven wins, including Best Picture and Steven Spielberg's long-awaited first win for Best ...
Despite the grisly subject matter, this movie is essentially about uncovering a kernel of hope and dignity in the midst of a monstrous tragedy. The story of Oskar Schindler's sacrifices for the Jews sets this apart from other Holocaust dramas. Uncompromising in its portrayal of good, evil, and all the shades in between, Schindler's List offers ...
Universal Acclaim Based on 30 Critic Reviews. 95. 97% Positive 29 Reviews. 3% Mixed 1 Review. 0% Negative 0 Reviews. All Reviews; Positive Reviews; ... His moral and intellectual depth is that of a child (and the funny part is Schindler's List may be the most mature movie Spielberg has made till now). Read More Report. 3. YoursTruly Nov 9, 2012
Schindler's List is a 1993 American epic historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian.It is based on the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally.The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II.
Schindler's List (1993) - Movies, TV, Celebs, and more... Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. ... Metacritic reviews. Schindler's List. 95. Metascore. 30 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com. 100.
Schindler's List: Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall. In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
As it stands, 'Schindler's List' which Spielberg thought would lose every dime of its $22 million budget, made an unprecedented $321.2 million at the box office. That kind of reach for a film of ...
paladeen 2 August 2008. Schindler's List is one of the most overrated films of all time: It won seven Oscars. It is the 6th highest rated film on IMDb. The critics loved it, and the Internet is flooded with reviews where people rave about being "deeply moved" or "touched." Ultimately, the film is a shallow failure.
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II. ... Login to write a review. A review by Mayurpanchamia. 80 % Written by Mayurpanchamia on ... But this movie is special because as a Jew Spielberg felt the pain of Holocaust and ...
Schindler's List (1993) Official Trailer - Liam Neeson, Steven Spielberg Movie HD. After meeting Page, Keneally decided to write a book—a novel, since he was a novelist—about Schindler's ...
Review. Hundreds of films have been made about the tragedies of the Holocaust. Tapping into his heritage, Steven Spielberg tackles the 20th Century's most heinous atrocity in the film Schindler's List.. The film chronicles the life of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a war profiteer who has a change of heart as he witnesses first hand the destruction of which the Nazis are capable.
They are not designed for our pleasure, but for much grander purposes. "Schindler's List" is a challenging film but a deeply healing one. Virtually every aspect of "Schindler's List" achieves perfection from performances to production quality to script to direction. It would be most challenging to find a film that achieves such balanced perfection.
Dec. 14, 2023 7:23 AM PT. On a wintry 1944 night at Auschwitz, several Jewish women, naked and shivering, are forced into a large room and plunged into total darkness. They scream and cling to ...
"Schindler's List" won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and director, and turned Steven Spielberg from a popular filmmaker (whose "Jurassic Park" was released the same year ...
Schindler is also something of a cipher, just as he was for Thomas Keneally, whose 1982 book, "Schindler's List," marked a daring synthesis of fiction and fact. Reconstructing the facts of Schindler's life to fit the format of a novel, Mr. Keneally could only draw upon the memories of those who owed their lives to the man's unexpected heroism.
Schindler's List is a furious movie, in which sharply-defined images batter us constantly, weeping violins lacerate us, and human behavior is presented in emphatic scenes that are so distinct in themselves (the narrative flow of the film is actually quite jumpy, when you stop and think about chronology and the links between consecutive moments ...