Analysis Of The Film Schindler’s List
Analysis of Content
Central Historical Message: The film follows Oskar Schindler, a Sudeten German businessman, who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II.
Major points:
- One of the best movies on holocaust which reveals the humanity by saving thousand lives from brutality.
- The triumph of the human spirit;
- The difference one individual can make;
- The dangerous ease of denial.
- The shot of the movie was taken in Krakow of Poland which was a holocaust victim country and that made the movie more emotionally ragged.
Context
Information about director: Steven Spielberg who directed the film (born Dec 18, 1946) is an American film maker. He is considered one of the most popular directors and producers in film history.
What does the film reveal about the period in which it was made? The Jews in Schindler’s List, even as they are forced into the ghetto and later into the labor camp, suffer from a denial of their true situation. This denial afflicted many European Jews who felt victim to the Holocaust. They leave their homes in the countryside and move to Kraków and later to the ghetto because the Nazis force them to. Once in the ghetto, however, they believe the bad times will pass. Their denial of their situation continues in the labor camp, even as killing surrounds them. A prime example of denial occurs in the scene when Mila Pfefferberg tells the other women in her barracks about the rumors she heard of the death camps like Auschwitz. She tells the women how Jews are being gassed to death en masse, their remains cremated. The women respond with an almost angry dismissal, saying something like that surely could not happen. However, the actors manage to convey the fact that deep down, the women suspect the truth. They have suffered enough horror already to know mass extermination is possible.
How was it received then or later? Schindler's List received acclaim from both film critics and audiences. Americans such as talk show host Oprah Winfrey and President Bill Clinton urged their countrymen to see it. World leaders in many countries saw the film, and some met personally with Spielberg. Audiences polled by Cinema Score gave the film a rare 'A+' grade on an A+ to F scale.
Visual Analysis
Editing
Spielberg uses parallel editing, or crosscutting, a cinematic convention in which two or more concurrent scenes are interwoven with each other, throughout Schindler’s List. Parallel editing illuminates the stark difference between the hardships of the Jews and the comfort and optimism of Schindler and the Nazis in Poland.
Sound
In Schindler’s List there are a lot of different types of sound that are used that help in establishing the theme of this film. In this particular scene, The Girl in Red, I heard a lot of yelling, gun firing, and what sounds like young children singing. The yelling and the gun firing helps establish the fact that there is a lot of fighting throughout this film. The tone of the song that the children are singing gives a saddened feeling.
Overall Conclusion
How the film does hold up a piece of history? Schindler’s List recovers history of a specific World War II place and portrays real events. The film is seen as a realistic depiction of life during the Holocaust, in terms of the brutality of the Nazis and the lifestyles of those they persecuted, though it does stray from the real story in a few big ways.
References
- 'Schindler's List: Myth, movie, and memory' (PDF).
- http://movieclips.com/2o8b-schindlers-list-movie-the-girl-in-red/
- The Making of Schindler’s List: behind the Scenes of an Epic Film, by Franciszek Palowski https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/83939.The_Making_of_Schindler’s_List
