Schindlers List

There is now a fairly large body of cinematic depictions of the Holocaust. These films supplement what has become an enormous body of scholarly literature that has grown up around this dismal subject. The best of these films, in my opinion, fill an important need and, because of the nature of the medium, accomplish something that words printed on a page cannot. They give the modern viewer a sense of the sheer horror of what the Holocaust was and they do so in a direct way that has a visceral impact, a type of impact that more scholarly and purely verbal treatments of the subject cannot have. Two of the best Holocaust films, in the opinion of this reviewer, are Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Heinz Schirk’s The Wannsee Conference.

This essay’s purpose is to review Schindler’s List but I would like to use The Wannsee Protocol, a vastly different kind of film, as a kind of foil to set off the cinematic techniques used in Schindler’s List. Spielberg’s film is something that might be called a panoramic view of the Holocaust. In it we see how the lives of thousands of people were affected by this particular piece of the Nazi party. We see not only how it affected the Jews of Crackow (and, by extension, the Jews of Europe taken as a whole), but also how it affected the lives of their Nazi tormentors as well--the character of Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow labor camp, is unforgettable. Schindler’s List is history writ large and history written with a moral purpose. Pursuant to that moral purpose Spielberg uses cinematic technique both to dramatize the story and to rivet the audience’s attention on scenes and details that the director considers important.

The Wannsee Conference is something completely different. The movie is a reenactment of a what was essentially a business meeting. On January 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, the number two man in the SS behind Himmler, chaired a meeting attended by top functionaries of numerous agencies of the Nazi government. The intent of that meeting was to get various organs of the government “on the same page” so to speak concerning the “Final Solution.” At this time Heydrich “ordered the inclusion of all European Jews in the murder program \” that was the Final Solution. The movie lacks any and all of the cinematic touches employed by Spielberg; it is simply a recording of what was said by a group of very ordinary looking people. It is, however, just as essentially horrific as Spielberg’s film—and counterpoints it nicely—because the theme is so very terrible, a group of bureaucrats sitting around and trying to figure out the best means to carry out state policy, that state policy being mass murder on an industrial scale.

Spielberg wished to make the movie in a documentary style. How does he achieve this?
Spielberg uses several cinematic techniques to imply a documentary style, including black and white film and handheld cameras. By including multiple Jewish characters, he provides varied perspectives in the same way a documentary would. By framing the film with color scenes set in the present, he makes a clear distinction between the world of the story and the world of the present.

Many critics have noted that Schindler's List is more popular than anything else written or filmed about the Holocaust. Why do you think this is?
First and foremost, it is made by Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful director in history. His name alone is enough to bring plenty of attention to the film. Besides that, there are many aspects of this film that make it more accessible than other Holocaust works. Though it is based on a true story, it is fictionalized, making it easier to swallow than a pure account of the Holocaust and its horrors. It has an uplifting ending, with good winning over evil. It confirms the idea that one person can make a difference. Finally, its focus on one group of people provides a scope that is easily comprehended. Viewers do not have to take in the total horror of the Holocaust; they only have to follow one group of people at one work camp.