Schindler's List
(1993) Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, directed by Steven Spielberg
"Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He
witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them." --imdb.com
Daniel Dubei's Review Guide to Schindler's List
A Review by Daniel Dubei
When one begins watching Schindler’s List, the first word that may come to mind is meticulous. The
manner in which the processing agent sets up his small table, laying down the stamp, the inkpad, the
inkwell, the stapler. Later on, watching Oskar Schindler prepare for his risky venture to hobnob with
the elite Nazi SS officers, tying his tie, placing his Nazi pin just so on the lapel. Mr. Spielberg
places the viewer palpably in the scene, as if the viewer were sitting in the lounge chair watching Oskar prepare.
Another word that comes to mind at the start of the film is foreboding. The movie begins with a
Jewish family beginning their Sabbath by lighting candles and singing a hymn. The foreboding comes
from watching the candles die out, the color in the film fleeing with the heat, into a crisp, cold black and white.
Schindler’s List is a seminal work, a film that has touched the world in a profound way. “It has
become part of an ongoing worldwide cultural war that for decades has been debating both the nature
and causes of the Holocaust and the advisability of having artists interpret the events surrounding
the Nazi genocide.” (Manchel, pg. 83). Many critics and historians debate the point on whether film
can truly express the horror of the Holocaust without dehumanizing, or desensitizing the audience of
the atrocity which occurred. Langford writes with disgust at the term ‘the Holocaust film.’ With so
many Holocaust films coming out, he wonders if the “potentially solecistic and morally equivocal
overtones have been magically mitigated by usage,” (pg. 24) and if such movies can truly be placed
alongside other genres such as westerns, or musicals, or the detective film, movies made more for
entertainment. Others do see movies such as Schindler’s List as more beneficial than not. Manchel
quotes Yehuda Bauer defending Schindler’s List “by arguing that it is ‘extremely close to the events
it portrays,’ ‘as close as a film can be to the reality of the Holocaust’....yet “Spielberg’s movie
[is] ‘a transgression, but a most necessary transgression.’” (pg. 1). Eley and Grossman state
“Schindler’s List allows us to explore the contemporary valencies of historical knowledge. It places
history at risk, and allows questions to be asked that aren’t often posed outside the already
politicized discourse of minority cultures in the late twentieth-century United States.” (pg. 45).
Because of the horrific nature of the Holocaust, the movie’s importance cannot be understated. Mr.
Spielberg knew when he first wanted to make the movie in 1982 that he was not ready, that the world
would only see an entertainer in him, the maker of Jaws and E.T. Would they not dismiss outright his
movie if he were to make it then? More importantly, as he has stated in the past that this film
reflected himself, “Schindler’s List traces out Spielberg’s own anxieties about his minority culture
status and his struggles to overcome them.” (Marks, pg. 54). After ten years, he felt mature enough
both artistically and personally to come to terms with his Jewish heritage and to make a financial
risk on a very sensitive subject.
Filmed mostly in Poland. giving the movie a true sense of verisimilitude, the movie does not
hold anything back, yet also is not overly sentimental, though the ending feels slightly staged
in comparison to the rest of the film. The cast and crew were pleasantly welcomed in Poland, though
Ben Kingsley, who plays Isak Stern in the film, did actually get into a fist fight with a German
businessman. Recounts Spielberg:
“Ben got into a fistfight with a 70-year old German businessman in a hotel bar. He was a
very stout, strong man, not a weak old man, who said to one of our actors, ‘Are you Jewish?’ When
the actor said yes, he said Hitler should have finished the job and made a slashing gesture across
his neck. Ben went for him, took him on.”
The movie does not delve into the reasons why Nazi Germans reached the point of such hatred
toward another group of people. Spielberg assumes that those who watch his movie already know
something about the Holocaust and about World War II. Spielberg also does not go into why the
Germans needed to attack Poland. The movie starts right in to the story, first about the
deportation of the Jews into Krakow Ghettos while at the same time, Oskar Schindler consorts
with the elite SS officers.
Filmed in black and white, Spielberg aimed to represent the 1940s as his modern day audience
knows it best, from black and white footage from the 40s. Using black and white also has the
effect of maturing the movie, especially considering Spielberg directed it. To this point,
Spielberg was known as an entertainer, an over-the-top, in-your-face director of such hits
as Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and just earlier in 1993, Jurassic Park. His more serious
films could not achieve the critical acclaim that would make people take him seriously.
Schindler’s List, however, is not an entertaining movie. It does have the traditional
Spielberg humor, such as the scene where someone was caught with a stolen chicken in
Goeth’s forced labor camp. Goeth lines up a number of men and boys and asks them who
stole the chicken. When no one answers, Goeth grabs a gun and shoots a random Jew to
death. As he prepares to shoot again, a young Jewish boy starts whimpering and Goeth
says, “You stole it.” The boy shakes his head, crying. “But you know who did,” continues
Goeth, to which the boy nods his head. He then points to the man Goeth shot and screams,
“He stole it!”
The movie also features several very horrific moments, including the emptying of the Ghetto,
Goeth’s panache for sniping at Jews from his lofty mansion, and a truly tense moment when the
women, wrongly sent to Auschwitz, walk into a dark room, are ordered to strip and given a hot
shower, though the viewer feels they are about to watch a gassing scene.
The movie concludes somewhat melodramatically. Schindler cries and bemoans the fact that if he
were to sell one more thing, a ring on his finger, a gold necklace, he could have saved two more
Jews here, or three more there. Then at the end, bringing the movie to the present day, and
shifting back to color, the surviving members of Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews) all come to
place a rock on Schindler’s grave in Jerusalem. But how else to end such a searing, visceral
movie? Some good did come from the Holocaust. Jews were saved. And some Germans did have a heart.
Good questions are raised by some as to whether such a movie would be detrimental to a study of the
Holocaust, or to the memory of that awful event. Visual experiences tend to desensitize individuals,
to lower the threshold of disgust towards certain actions. Would presenting such a violent,
realistic film demean the actual events because they are now represented through a medium normally
and commonly designed to entertain? From my vantage point, I saw this movie in my first year in
college. I learned more about the Holocaust from that movie than I had from history classes in
high school. It became the stepping stool which increased my desire to learn more about those events.
And that is the power of this movie. More than any other film, Schindler’s List touched me profoundly.
Here it showed events not too far in the past about something so cruel and evil, the purposeful and
deliberate elimination of a race of human beings. How could something like that occur so close in
time to this, our “civilized” modern age? Could it still happen in the future? Most certainly.
Indeed, just the following year after Schindler’s List came out, militant Hutus of Rwanda began
systematically killing and destroying Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Nearly 1 million Tutsis were killed
in mere months. How did the Hutus see the Tutsis? Cockroaches. That’s what Tutsis were to the Hutus.
Who feels any remorse when killing cockroaches? The events surrounding one hotel owner in Rwanda
saving over one thousand Tutsis take up the plot of the film Hotel Rwanda, in the same vein as
Schindler’s List, yet not as violent, nor as emotionally searing. Schindler’s List broke the ground
for other such movies to have a chance, movies such as Hotel Rwanda, or The Pianist, another powerful
Holocaust movie.
Yet, even with these movies attempting to educate mankind about the evils and horrors of genocide,
1) genocide still occurs, currently in The Sudan, and 2) the powers that could do something about
it are as silent today as they were in 1994 when Rwanda occurred, or in 1975 when Cambodia occurred.
Jews still receive persecution, especially still in Europe, and the Jewish state of Israel continues
to have serious problems with several of its neighbors who want to throw them out into the Mediterranean.
In the end, the movie succeeds to present one small story in the colossal history of the Holocaust realistically
and artistically. It is not 100% accurate, and, being only 3 hours long, cannot really tell the whole
story. But it touches the viewer’s heart. It also provides people the noble and universal ‘good vs.
evil’ struggle - at one point in the movie Schindler and Goeth sit across from each other debating over
the lives of the Jewish workers in the forced labor camp. Goeth, the cold, deadly and maniacal SS
officer in charge of the forced labor camp, could easily sit in for Lucifer, facing and dueling against
the Christ-figure, Schindler, who actually loudly states during this standoff, “They’re mine!” And
like a true salvation story, Schindler had a change of heart, showing that even the vilest, sleaziest
of people can do something good, or even change completely for the better and save the lives of 1100 people.
Bibliography
Carr, Jay. “Spielberg in black and white: To make his movie about the Holocaust the director had to come
to terms with a lot of history, including his own.” Boston Globe. December 12, 1993.
Manchel, Frank. “Mishegoss: ‘Schindler’s List,’ Holocaust representation and film history.” Historical
Journal of Film, Radio, and Television. vol. 18, no. 3, (August 1998), pg. 431.
Langford, Barry. “’You cannot look at this’: Thresholds of unrepresentability in Holocaust film.” Journal
of Holocaust Education, 1999 8(3): 23-40.
Marks, Clifford J.,and Robert Torry. “’Herr direktor’: Biography and autobiography in Schindler’s List.”
Biography, 2000 23(1): 49-70.
Eley, Geoff and Atina Grossmann. “Watching Schindler’s List: Not the last word.” New German Critique,
1997 (71): 41-62.
Manchel, Frank. “A reel witness: Steven Spielberg’s representation of the Holocaust in Schindler’s List.”
Journal of Modern History, 1995 67(1): 83-100.
Guide to Schindler’s List
The following are books and movies that are 1) the primary sources, the movie, the book, 2)
commentary or criticism regarding this movie, or 3) other stories that shed light on the events
in Poland or at the concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Keneally, Thomas. Schindler’s List. Touchstone. 1982.
This is the book upon which Spielberg based the movie, published in 1982 and immediately
scooped up by Universal for an attempt at making it into a movie.
Spielberg, Steven, director. Schindler’s List. Universal. 1993.
This is the movie itself that Spielberg made in 1993. It won the
Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director among others. As shown in the
review, it was groundbreaking and controversial.
Crowe, David M. Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life,
Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List. Westview Press. 2004.
A biography of the man who saved the lives of 1100 Jews.
Wiesel, Elie. Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust. Cambridge
University Press. 2002.
Commentary and criticism from one who survived Auschwitz.
Loshitzky, Yosefa. Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical perspectives
on Schindler’s List. Indiana University Press. 1997.
Scholarly criticism regarding the movie.
Palowski, Franciszek. The Making of Schindler’s List:
Behind the Scenes of an Epic Film. Birch Lane Press. 1998.
A book detailing the events that transpired during the making
of the film.
Silet, Charles L. P. editor. The Films of Steven Spielberg.
The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD. 2002.
This book looks at some of Spielberg’s movies, not necessarily
just the big hits or even the critically acclaimed, but rather ones
that are noteworthy, such as the movie Always, which reached for greatness
but fell short.
Friedman, Lester D., and Brent Notbohm. Steven Spielberg Interviews.
University Press of Mississippi, Jackson. 2000.
Various interviews Spielberg gave during or after filming some of his
movies, including Schindler’s List.
John Williams, Itzhak Perlman. Schindler’s List: Original Motion Picture
Soundtrack. 1993.
The soundtrack to the movie by John Williams, an Oscar winner. Very
moving performance by Itzhak Perlman on the violin.
Polanski, Roman, director. The Pianist. Miramax. 2002.
Taken from Mr. Szpilman’s autobiography about Szpilman’s account
of what transpired around him in Warsaw during the war period. Winner of
Best Actor and Best Director at the Oscars.
Szpilman, Wladyslaw. The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of
One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945. Picador. 2002.
The autobiographical account of events in Warsaw of this famous pianist.
Begnini, Roberto, director. Life is Beautiful. Miramax. 1998.
A fictional tale of a Jewish family in Italy taken to a concentration camp.
Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea. Schocken. 1996.
An autobiography of Wiesel, who survived Auschwitz.
Wiesel, Elie. The Night Trilogy. Hill and Wang. 1987.
A fictional tale about the events in Auschwitz which Wiesel saw.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. Pantheon Books. 1993.
A graphic novel depicting a fictionalized tale of a family taken to a concentration camp.
Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. Penguin Classics. 1992.
This is a collection of short stories by Borowski about his experiences in Auschwitz.
Volavkova, Hana. I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Schocken. 1994.
A collection of art done by children under the age of 15 at a concentration
camp. Some of the children did not survive, but were executed.
Ten Boom, Corrie, and John Scherrill. The Hiding Place. Bantam. 1984.
An autobiography of the Ten Boom family in Denmark who ran an Underground
during the War.
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