Schindler's List

Schindler's List is an Academy Award-winning 1993 movie based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, published in the United States as Schindler's List and subsequently re-issued in Commonwealth countries under that name as well. The movie, adapted by Steven Zaillian and directed by Steven Spielberg, relates the tale of Oskar Schindler, a German Catholic businessman who was instrumental in saving the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The title refers to a list of the names of 1,100 Jews whom Schindler hired to work in his factory and kept from being sent to the concentration camps.

Schindler's List consistently ranks amongst the finest movies of all time. It is currently ranked as 9th best film by the American Film Institute, and, as of July 25, 2006, rated number six on the top 250 films on the Internet Movie Database with a 8.8/10 rating.

Taglines: "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire." "The List Is Life."

Plot

The movie begins with the lighting of two candles, the flames being the only color elements in a monochromatic frame. A Hasidic family prays with the father singing the benediction. Following the prayer, the candles burn down completely, the smoke offering a segue to the next frame of a locomotive's smokestack.

It is September, 1939. The Polish Army has been defeated by the Germans in less than three weeks, starting World War II in Europe. Jews living in occupied Poland are ordered to relocate to population centers. The film's action starts with crowds of Jews from all over the country, Hasidic, assimilated, rich, and poor, being detained in KrakÃ³w, and submitting their names to German officials waiting on the station platforms with typewriters and lists.

As this is happening, Oskar Schindler has arrived in KrakÃ³w. He is a hitherto unsuccessful businessman from Germany, who has come to Poland with the hope of using the now abundant slave labor force of Jews and Poles to manufacture goods for the German Army. Schindler makes a very good impression with the occupying authorities early on, being a member of the Nazi Party and lavishing gifts and bribes upon the army and SS officials now running southern Poland. He becomes a friend to the SS and Police Leader of KrakÃ³w, Julian Scherner, and quickly calls in favors as he begins to establish himself as a businessman in the region.

With military sponsors in his back pocket, he sets out to acquire a factory for the production of enamelware, mainly for cookery. He is told he must manufacture goods such as pots, pans, and cooking materials for the war effort. Because he hasn't the money to buy the factory and it's machinery, and his administrative skills are dubious at best, he gains a contact in Itzhak Stern, a functionary in the local Judenrat (Jewish Council) who in turn has contacts with the now underground Jewish business community. Schindler makes the businessmen a deal they cannot refuse: they will loan him the money for the factory, and he will give them a small share of the pots and pans produced, for trade on the black market outside the KrakÃ³w ghetto. He takes particular pleasure in telling them that they must take him at his word, and that no court would ever uphold a contract between a German and a Jew.

Schindler gets his money and opens the factory. He pleases the Nazis and enjoys his new-found wealth, while Stern handles all administration and uses his position to help his fellow Jews, who have now been confined to a ghetto within KrakÃ³w. Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and are certified as "essential workers", guaranteeing that they will not be rounded up at night by the Gestapo. This last point is key, and Stern uses his considerable skills to make sure as many people as possible are deemed "essential" by the Nazi bureaucracy — even children, the elderly, and the infirmed: people who would otherwise be deported immediately. Schindler becomes aware of what is going on, and seems embarrassed by the whole arrangement, but takes no action to stop it.

Soon after, an SS officer named Amon GÃ¶th arrives in KrakÃ³w to initiate construction of a labor camp, PÅ‚aszÃ³w, and to assume control of the ghetto. In what is considered by many as one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, a female Jewish engineer explains that a concrete foundation for a schoolhouse has been improperly laid, and for this GÃ¶th has her shot in the head. In the next breath, GÃ¶th orders that everything she requested be done.

In due course, GÃ¶th razes the KrakÃ³w ghetto, sending in hundreds of troops to clear the cramped rooms and shooting anyone who cannot or will not leave. Schindler watches the massacre from the hills overlooking the area, and is profoundly affected. However, he now faces the more immediate problem of how to run his factory without his workers. He meets GÃ¶th, befriends him, and convinces him to let him keep his workers for considerable bribes and payoffs. Schindler is now, though reluctantly, sheltering people who have very few skills in his factory.

During the liquidation of the ghetto, Schindler sees a girl in a red coat, which is depicted in colour against the monochrome frame. Film critics and scholars have suggested the appearance of the girl in the red coat is a "marker" used by Spielberg to denote the transformation of Schindler's personality, whilst others believe her apparent indifference to the carnage around her as she walks through the streets to be symbolic of the rest of the world's lack of action over the Holocaust. The first time she appears, Schindler changes from a cold-hearted businessman into a different person; he makes his first attempts to covertly assist his workers and save them from persecution and death afterwards. With the second appearance of the little girl in red, this time dead upon a cartful of bodies, Schindler makes a further transformation into an altruistic angel whose primary motive is not profit, but rather to save the lives of his workers.

In the labor camp, a prisoner suggests that the "unessential" Jews are taken off to concentration camps to be killed, but some of her audience rejects the idea claiming that it is ridiculous and illogical. One old woman exclaims, "We are their work force! Why would they want to kill their own work force?"

To Amon GÃ¶th's considerable consternation, and to Schindler's horror, an order arrives from Berlin commanding GÃ¶th to exhume and destroy all bodies of those killed in the ghetto razing, dismantle PÅ‚aszÃ³w, and to ship the whole population to Auschwitz. He explains to Schindler that he is being asked to do this straightaway (and it is the administrative burden that horrifies him, not the thought of having to destroy "every rag"): "As soon as I can arrange the shipments, maybe thirty or forty days — that ought to be fun." Schindler prevails upon GÃ¶th to let him keep his workers, so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), away from the Holocaust, now fully underway in Poland. GÃ¶th acquiesces, for a payoff of millions of Reichsmarks. So that his workers can be kept off the trains to the killing centers, Schindler, with Stern, assembles a list of them.

"Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in PÅ‚aszÃ³w camp, being on it means the difference between life and death. All the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site â€" except that one of the trains carrying women is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz. Schindler rushes immediately to Auschwitz and stops their gassing. He bribes the camp commander, Rudolph Hoss, with a cache of diamonds. Hoss reluctantly agrees and the women are spared. Once the Schindler women arrive in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler institutes firm controls on the Nazi guards assigned to the factory, permits the Jews to observe the Sabbath, and spends the rest of his fortune bribing Nazi officials. He runs out of money just as the German army surrenders, ending the war in Europe.

As a German, a Nazi, and a self-described "profiteer of slave labor", Schindler must flee the oncoming Soviet Red Army. After dismissing the Nazi guards to return to their families, he packs a car in the night, and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter explaining his actions (and the fact that he is not a criminal), together with a ring engraved with the Talmudic quotation, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." Seeing his luxurious car, Schindler is consumed with guilt, realizing he could have bribed GÃ¶th for ten more Jews with it. He pulls the Nazi Party pin from his lapel, and cries, "This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this." The Jews that he saved surround him, reaching out to comfort him with assuring words, "You have saved so many." He then leaves with his wife and what belongings he can carry, dressed in striped prisoner uniforms to appear like refugees.

The Schindler Jews, having slept outside the factory gates through the night, are awakened by sunlight the next morning. A Russian dragoon arrives and announces to the Jews that they have been liberated. The Jews walk to a nearby town to look for food. As they walk abreast, the frame changes to another of the Schindler Jews in the present day at the grave of Oskar Schindler in Israel. The actors portraying the major characters walk hand-in-hand with the actual persons they portrayed, placing stones on Schindler's grave as they pass. The camera pans to the left, revealing a long line of people consisting of not only those portrayed in the film but also their families.

In a final scene, a man places a rose on the grave, and stands contemplatively over it. Though many believe it to be director Steven Spielberg, it is actually Liam Neeson, who portrayed Oskar Schindler in the film and is the only actor not present in the aforementioned line of people.

Production

The girl in red

Steven Spielberg later spoke of the making of the movie as affecting him deeply. It was shot almost entirely in black and white (with a color prologue and epilogue, a red coat in two scenes, and color candle flames in another). It starred Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern, and Ralph Fiennes as Amon GÃ¶th. Its main tagline was simply, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire": the quote from the Talmud that was featured towards the end of the film. Critically acclaimed, the film won praise for depicting — often in exceptional, graphic detail — the horrifying brutality of the Holocaust.

Nominated for twelve Academy Awards, it won seven, including the coveted Best Picture and Best Director awards for Spielberg, which many of his supporters felt he had been unfairly denied for prior productions, although he had previously received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. The movie also won the Academy Award for Original Score, which was composed and conducted by John Williams and featured violin solos by Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Response

In the years since its release, Schindler's List has risen in status to be regarded as one of the greatest movies of the 1990s. It is also considered to be Steven Spielberg's greatest directorial accomplishment by many viewers and critics: the former vote it consistently among the top ten movies on the Internet Movie Database Top 250, while the latter voted it #9 in the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies series. In addition, the American Film Institute voted Liam Neeson's Schindler as the 13th greatest movie hero of all time, while Ralph Fiennes' GÃ¶th was voted the 15th greatest villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains series. In 2006 it was selected as the 3rd most inspiring movie of all time by AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers. In 2004, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Empire magazine cited uses of German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism in its cinematography.

While virtually all critics supported the film, some insisted that it was picked for Best Picture due to subject matter more than other issues. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone complained that, "The film's near-certain victory is based less on merit than on the marketing of its ambitious intentions. The Academy doesn't judge movies, it weighs them by subject matter."

Following the critical and box office success of the film, Spielberg founded and continues to finance the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non-profit organization with the goal of providing an archive for the filmed testimony of as many survivors of the Holocaust as possible, so that their stories will not be lost in the future.

Differences from the book

There are several notable differences between the book and film:
*The movie omits any reference to Oskar Schindler collecting guns for the Jews to defend themselves from the SS guards. There were two mentions of it in the book, one of them half a page long. It was described as an "independent arsenal" containing carbines and automatic weapons, some pistols, and hand grenades.
*The movie places the Jews at the mercy of the guards at the end of the war, with Schindler calling on the humanity of the SS, with the Jews under the guns of the guards, who then turn away. In the book, Schindler had ensured the SS commander was sent away, as he was the only one of the SS detail who believed in the "Final Solution", and when the war was lost, Herr Schindler simply dismissed the guards, and they left.
*The insane rages and cruelty of Amon GÃ¶th were not depicted in the movie to the extent they are in the book. Sometimes GÃ¶th would set his two dogs, Ralf and Rolf, upon prisoners, who would be torn apart. He would then shoot the victim in the head when he/she stopped moving.
*The book describes Schindler's "escape" from a previously Nazi-occupied area soon after the war ends, accompanied by eight Jewish Schindler camp inmates who tag along for his protection. This entire journey is described along with an incident where they encounter a group of American soldiers, among them a Jewish priest who cries and hugs Schindler after reading the "letter of reference" given to him by those he saved. The book also traces the remainder of his life in Germany, beset by monetary difficulties and poor health. On several occasions he receives financial help from former "Schindler Jews". These sections have been avoided in the movie.
*The scene in the movie where Schindler breaks down, wishing he could have saved more Jews by trading his remaining wealth, after the camp inmates present him with a memento does not appear in the book.

Trivia

* Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd was considered to play Oskar Schindler. The actor claims he is often mistaken for Liam Neeson, who did play the part.
* Ralph Fiennes' performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. While he didn't get the Oscar, he did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award, which is the British equivalent.
* According to a book review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 2005-09-25, Mietek Pemper, an inmate who served as secretary to Amon GÃ¶th wrote the list. Historically, unlike the movie, "Schindler's list" was really Pemper's list. Pemper's first hand version of the events are recorded in the book Der rettende Weg (ISBN 3455094937).
* Roman Polanski was asked to direct the film. However, he passed on it, having survived the Polish Ghettos himself. He felt it would be too personal, and would bring up too many hard memories that he was not prepared to deal with at the time. He went on to direct another Holocaust-themed movie, The Pianist, in 2002. This earned him an Oscar.
* Steven Spielberg refused payment for making this movie, saying that it would be like "taking blood money".
* Martin Scorsese was another prospective director, but feeling it should be made by a Jewish director, he traded it to Spielberg in exchange for the rights to remake Cape Fear, which Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment produced.

1997 TV controversy

On Sunday, February 23, 1997, the film was shown on television in the United States, being carried by NBC with extremely limited sponsor interruption by the Ford Motor Company. Per Spielberg's insistence, it aired unedited and uncensored. The telecast was the first ever to receive a TV-M (now TV-MA) rating under the TV Parental Guidelines that had been established at the beginning of that year. Many fundamentalist and evangelical Christian groups stridently objected to the film's being shown on network television at all, due to scenes of nudity, violence, and the use of vulgar language which were not edited out of the TV production. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma congressman, stated that NBC, by airing the film, had brought television "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity," adding that airing the film was an insult to "decent-minded individuals everywhere." Under fire from Democrats as well as fellow Republicans, Coburn apologized for his outrage, saying: "My intentions were good, but I've obviously made an error in judgment in how I've gone about saying what I wanted to say." He said he had reversed his opinion on airing the film, but qualified it ought to have been aired later at night, when, he said, "there are still large numbers of children watching without parental supervision."[1]

The film was re-broadcast on NBC on Sunday, March 14, 1999, and in 2001 on some PBS stations.

External links

* Filmsite review of the movie
* Schindler's List, the movie's website
* Schindler's List on Rotten Tomatoes
* Roger Ebert's review of Schindler's List
* James Berardinelli's review of Schindler's List
* The Shoah Foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg to videotape and preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
* Whosoever saves a single life..., a Holocaust rescuer's bibliography.
Schindler's List at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films lists

Schindler's List: Encyclopedia BETA

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