Revising Schindler’s LIst

It is revision time and today I am going to start reviewing Schindler’s List. As you know the film tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a war profiteer and a member of the Nazi party who saved over 1000 Jews during World War II. The film explores the human capacity for monumental evil as well as for extraordinary courage, caring and compassion. Schindler’s List is able to turn history into a moral lesson. It shows the viewers that the past – no matter how horrifying – must be preserved so that we don’t forget and so that we may judge. Preservation and judgement do not justify the past but reveal its meaning.

Director Steven Spielberg was once asked to choose an image that summarised all his films and he chose the little boy in Close Encounters “opening the door and standing in that beautiful yet awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway.” That “beautiful yet awful light” can be seen as knowledge and it offers both promise and danger. Spielberg in Schindler’s List encourages the viewer to step towards the light – “toward what we don’t understand and what we don’t know about what scares us.”

Schindler’s List Wiki

I know some of you are starting to revise for the exams, so don’t forget about the Schindler’s List wiki – it has lots of great resources. The link is on moodle.

Reviewing Ralph

Here is another review of Schindler’s List. As requested, it has sections on Ralph Fiennes performance as Amon Goeth.

BBC Film Review

I have added a review of “Schindler’s List” from the BBC as I think it is one that will be useful for the students who are preparing for the Formal Writing assessment.

In the same year, that Steven Spielberg had a huge hit with “Jurassic Park”, he also made his powerful testament to the suffering of the Jewish people during the Second World War, “Schindler’s List”.

It gave him the critical acclaim he wanted with seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.

Shot in black and white, with the odd carefully chosen touches in colour, the horror of the holocaust is laid bare and speaks for itself. The documentary style allows Spielberg to deliver his message without preaching. The clever use of light and shade also makes it visually stunning. When Oskar Schindler visits a night club, he looks like a 1930s movie star as his cigarette smoke spirals above his head, his eyes hidden in the shade.

It is the story of German businessman Oskar Schindler which captivates right to the end. He is transformed from physically imposing, charismatic philanderer to the humbled man, wishing he had saved more lives.

We watch nervously as he tries to save over a thousand Jews from almost certain death in concentration camps by getting them to work in his factory. He bribes officials and befriends Nazis including evil camp commandant, Goeth, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes.

Spielberg has cleverly juxtaposed Goeth and Schindler as two sides of the same coin. They both love the finer things in life, easily swayed by money and women. Playing on this, Schindler tries to show his contemporary that power can be better served by sparing people’s lives rather than taking them. It is an idea that Goeth acknowledges, but is destined not to adhere to for long.

The film finishes on a powerful note in present day with the real Schindler survivors and their descendants visiting his grave. It is the final reminder that this is a true story of one man’s bravery and that in “saving one life, you save the entire world”.

The Liquidation of the Ghetto

If you are struggling to answer questions on the key scene of the liquidation of the ghetto you may find it useful to review this clip on youtube.

Liam Neeson

The Irish actor Liam Neeson has the features and presence of a film star from the 1940s which made him ideal for the role of Oscar Schindler. Physically the actor cuts a strapping figure that also makes him ideal for larger than life hero roles. However, there is also a vulnerability about him that makes him equally suitable for the role of a sensitive hero, as well.

Neeson brought all of these characteristics to his star-making, Oscar-nominated, performance in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. The film accentuated Neeson’s old-style Hollywood looks by being shot in film noirish black and white. Neeson’s Schindler, who saves the lives of more than one thousand Jews from the extermination by the Nazis, is shady but honest, pragmatic but altruistic—the quintessential noir hero, a man walking a tightrope down some very dark, very mean streets. He is also a man with a desperate need to feel accepted— a typical Spielberg hero.

As we have discussed the real Schindler was an enigma. History still can’t put a finger on the actual motives that prompted him to save the lives of so many of his Jewish employees. Was he a humanist who saw a terrible wrong and did his best to right it? A charismatic conman? Or was he a clever opportunist who saw no profit in sending productive workers to the gas chambers? In fact, does it really matter? What does count is that he did save lives when others in similar positions sat back and did nothing.

For most of the film, Neeson plays Schindler as just such an enigma, a genuine man in the middle—until Spielberg blows the character’s fascinating ambiguity at the conclusion by having him break down in front of the Jews he has saved and despairing at not having been able to save more of them. This is the most criticised scene in the film. Some critics believe that this behaviour is inconsistent with the character Neeson, the screenwriter, and Spielberg have created for us up to this point that they can’t buy in to it. For others it strikes such a false note of strained sentimentality that it weakens Neeson’s performance. Is it his only unconvincing moment in whole film?

 

Anti-Semitism

One term that you may come across in our study of ‘Schindler’s List’ is anti-Semitism. Throughout history Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination. The word anti-Semitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945, is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism.

Amon Goeth

Amon Goeth was born in Vienna, 1908 and he joined the Nazi party in 1932, progressing to the ranks of the Gestapo in 1940. He was originally sent to German occupied Lublin, east Poland, Goeth found a liking for slaughter during the liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto, and so impressed his seniors with his methods that he was promoted to camp commandant of the Płaszów camp in Kraków in 1943. In the same year he supervised the brutal clearing of the Kraków ghetto in Podgórze, as well as the ghetto found in Tarnów. Having found a fondness for accepting bribes during his stint in Lublin he used his position in charge of liquidising ghettos to steal property and valuables confiscated from Jews.

Goeth was often to be found parading around on a white horse and he was notorious for his corrupt nature, heavy drinking and bouts of extreme violence. Several scenes in Schindler’s List never actually occurred however – he never murdered his stable boy (who survived the war), nor was he able to take pot shots at prisoners from his balcony, seeing that his house backed directly onto a hill. Goeth did shoot them from a hill though. In the words of Poldek Pfefferberg, ‘when you saw Goeth, you saw death’. Collective punishment became frequent; torture and death were daily events. Groups passing one another on different work shifts reported the daily number killed. In 1943 on Yom Kippur, an important holiday of the Jewish year, Goeth and his SS-men took 50 Jews from the barracks and shot them. Often prisoners were publicly hung, with more than 15,000 inmates lined up on the ground.

In 1944 he was relieved of his position and charged with theft of Reich property, though Germany’s looming military collapse meant he was never brought to tribunal. Diagnosed with diabetes and mental illness by SS doctors he spent the remainder of the war in a hospital and was arrested by American troops in 1945. Charged with the murder of 2,000 Jews during the evacuation of the Podgórze ghetto, and 8,000 deaths during his time in Plaszów, he was sentenced to death and hanged in Kraków in 1946. Goeth’s mistress Ruth- Irene Kalder remained loyal to him in death, keeping a photograph of him by her bedside until she died. After giving an interview in 1983 she declared him a charming man before choosing to commit suicide the next day.

Schindler the Sphinx

What has the Sphinx got to do with ‘Schindler’s List’ ? Well, if you are thinking about the one in Eygpt, not much really. However, another meaning of sphinx is an enigmatic or mysterious person. The character of Oskar Schindler as interpreted by Liam Neeson is certainly a fascinating and compelling enigma. But what was the real Schindler like?
As a hard-drinking, profiteering playboy, Schindler does not fit the standard mould for a hero, though neither was he the typical Nazi. Credited with saving 1,200 Jews his actions continue to serve as an example and inspiration. However, the question still remains – why did he do it ? No one will ever know exactly what made this complex man do what no German had the courage to do. A large part of the fascination of Schindler is that not even those who admire him most can figure out his motives.

Schindler’s Ark

“In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he was a saviour.

“This is the story of Oskar Schindler who risked his life to protect beleaguered Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who continually defied the SS, and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy.”

These quotes are from the dustjacket of Thomas Keneally’s Booker Prize winning novel ‘Schindler’s Ark’. The book was published in 1982 and later made into the film ‘Schindler’s List’.

‘Schindler’s Ark’ attempts to recreate the story of Oskar Schindler, a German factory owner who risked everything to save his Jewish workers from the death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. Thomas Keneally’s novel is based on the recollections of the Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews), Oscar Schindler himself, and other witnesses and it is told in a series of stories. It details the life of the opportunist and womaniser Schindler; Schindler’s wife, Emilie; the cruel SS commandant Amon Goeth; Schindler’s saintly factory manager, Itzhak Stern and many of other Jews who were subjected to the horrors of the Nazi regime. However, the book is mainly the story of Schindler’s unlikely heroism and his attempt to do good in the midst of incredible evil.