Schindler’s List: Behind The Black And White And Under The Red Coat

The multiple award-winning motion picture Schindler’s List came out in 1994, just shy of the fiftieth anniversary of when allied forces ended Nazi power in 1945. It is considered one of the best black and white films of modern times. Many people don’t know of the reasoning behind the decision of producing the film in black and white, nor the deeper essence of the beginning and ending scenes in color. The girl in the red coat is there to conduct much more reaction than just making the viewers melancholier. Why is it a young girl? Why is the redness of her coat being made known? Why did Stephen Spielberg make the majority of the film in black and white?

The film begins with the lighting of a candle. A Jewish family gathers around a table and one of them begins to say a prayer. When the prayer ends the house becomes empty and the candles burn on until they dwindle down into nothingness and the flame goes out. From there the film goes on in black and white for the majority of the remainder of the movie. The flame going out symbolizes the beginning of darkness and immorality of the Holocaust, also called the Shoah. Millions of Jews, ” two-thirds of the entire Jewish population in Europe” were brutally killed during the Shoah. The black and white makes all of the bloodshed black, and therefore less prominent, and puts on more of an unspeakable realism of all the lives taken for the viewers. The era of World War two, during which the Shoah occurred, is also educed since all pictures and film from then are also in black and white. As a result, it makes the audience feel as though they are taken back in time actually witnessing it happen to real people.

The little girl in the red coat is the only color in the movie other than the scenes at the beginning and very end of the movie. She is first pictured wondering down the street all by herself during a liquidation of a ghetto where Jews had been forced to live. Amongst her there are bodies dropping to the ground and the sound of constant gunfire. This horrifying act creates a shift in the mindset of Schindler who is horseback riding when he happens to stroll upon the occurrence. He realizes exactly how corrupt the acts of the German soldiers against the Jewish people are at this time. For him, the little girl is the epitome of all innocence of the Jews being slaughtered during the Shoah. The color of her coat can be said to represent all the bloodshed that has been turned black and made less visceral throughout the movie. The next time we see the little girl she is piled up with a bunch of other deceased Jewish bodies. You know it is her because the red coat is still adorned on her lifeless body. Seeing her passed on prompts Schindler to make his list that will end up saving over a thousand Jews. The fact that she is a little girl makes it hit the viewers much harder emotionally. If it was a middle-aged woman it wouldn’t have made such a heavy impact. We don’t see color in the film again until near the very end of the movie. We see the colorful glow of another lit candle during a Sabbath ceremony that Schindler allows the Jews to have in his factory. Very shortly after, it is announced that the war is over and that the Jews are free. The candle light in this scene represents the Jewish life, and that it will live on and keep burning even after going through something no race, culture, ethnicity, or religion should ever have to go through.

To finish, fully in color once again, it shows real Holocaust survivors walking along side actors that portrayed them in the movie. They walk along beside each other and each real survivor places a stone on top of the genuine grave site of Oskar Schindler located in Jerusalem. Stones atop of tombstones are Jewish tradition. They are preferred over flowers since they do not wither away and die eventually, like flowers. It is also said that Jews like to believe that “putting stones on a grave keeps the soul down in this world”. The more rocks the longer the memory and legacy of the departed person shall remain. Liam Neeson, the actor that portrayed Oskar Schindler, was last in the long line of people paying tribute. However, instead of a rock, Neeson placed roses on Schindler’s grave. Neeson loved and was honored to play the historical role, despite his non-Jewish identity, but it is said that he wanted people to realize that his role was only temporary - hence the withering flowers instead of stones- and all the respect should be directed towards the actual Oskar Schindler. The beginning and ending scenes in color exemplify the start of the mass genocide, widely known as the Holocaust, which started when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and the end of it in 1945 when allied powers eventually trounced Nazi authority. The black and white throughout the bulk of what’s left of the film is to make the bloodshed less protuberant, and to have watchers focus more on the Jews and their guiltlessness, and to throw us back into the era of the Second World War The little girl in the red coat symbolizes all the purity of the millions of Jews heartlessly slain. Schindler sees this when she is first pictured in the liquidation of a Jewish ghetto wondering down the street all alone. We see more a little more color in the flicker of a flame when the Jews are performing Sabbath in the factory. This flame implies that there are Jews that are still thriving and still blazing with faith. Even after being put through such ghastly actions.

Spielberg, the director, worked very long and hard to really show us, and make us feel the colossal impact that the Shoah had and even still holds on the world today.