Schindler's List: Film Analysis

Comprehending the Holocaust One Name at a Time<r>Summary

In the face of an evil like the Holocaust, making a true connection with the victims can be overwhelming. Separating the victims from the numbers in order to comprehend the scope and horror of the Holocaust is nearly impossible. Museums, books, and pictures help to educate people, but more than six million Jews alone were slaughtered, which is a tremendously difficult reality to grasp emotionally and intellectually. The enormous number of victims and the many ways in which they were tortured and murdered are so vast that one could get lost in these statistical masses without ever really understanding the plight of individual victims. Only the victims themselves were truly able to feel the horror of the Holocaust. Steven Spielberg hoped to address this difficulty with Schindler’s List. Since it is easier for people to make connections on a personal rather than an abstract level, Spielberg tried to replace the vast numbers with specific faces and names. He tried to ensure that viewers would make personal connections with the characters in the film and thus begin to digest the events on a smaller scale.

Spielberg manages to convey the horror the Schindlerjuden faced by making the viewers feel as if they are participating in the events, not just watching. Viewers meet characters and follow their plights closely, developing a connection to these individual victims who are themselves representative of all Holocaust victims. This connection is Spielberg’s main goal in Schindler’s List. He wants the viewer to identify with the characters, to feel their pain and fear. This individualization forces viewers to confront the horror on a personal level and to realize that every victim had a story, loved ones, a home, a business, and a life. To look at the Jews of the Holocaust simply as a group or race dehumanizes them a second time, removing their individuality and uniqueness. The Nazis dehumanized Jews in the camps by tattooing numbers on their arms in order to identify them by number rather than name, and Spielberg makes an effort to recognize individuals’ names in his film.

Oskar Schindler himself embodies this idea of recognizing and caring for the individual. He is unable to stand by and watch his Jewish workers perish, for he makes a personal connection with them and does not want to see them killed. This relationship between Schindler and the Schindlerjuden parallels the connection the viewers make with the latter. In a sense, the viewer knows and cares about these people, wants them to survive, and feels triumphant when they do.

Spielberg personalizes the Nazis as well, however. The character of Amon Goeth allows an intimate glimpse into the mind of a Nazi officer corrupted by anti-Semitism. He shoots Jews from his balcony for target practice. He sees the Jewish people as a mass, not as individuals with thoughts and feelings. However, he is intoxicated by his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch, and struggles with his conflicting feelings of attraction to Helen and pure hatred of Jews. Unlike Schindler, Goeth denies his connection to an individual. He cannot overcome his hatred, just as the Nazi Party in general could not overcome its wholesale hatred of Jews.

Spielberg carries the idea of individualism through to the powerful final scene in the film. Here, in full color, the real surviving Schindlerjuden appear. Lined up as far as the eye can see—many with their actor counterparts in the film—they place rocks on Oskar Schindler’s grave. Spielberg’s decision to show the actors accompanying the actual survivors serves two purposes. First, the scene drives home the point that the characters in the film are real people rather than just invented figures. Viewers can feel a great sense of satisfaction in seeing the actual survivors who triumphed over evil. Second, Spielberg is sending a message to all those who doubt the reality of the Holocaust that human proof of the tragedy exists and that what happened can never be erased. Witnesses to the horror are still alive to tell their tales and to make sure we never forget.

<r>Analysis<r>The Impact of Black-and-White Film<r>Summary

In movies set in modern times, a director’s choice to use black and white might seem trite and artistically showy. In Schindler’s List, however, the black-and-white presentation effectively evokes the World War II era and deepens the impact of the story. Black and white also presents the filmmaker with the opportunity to use sparing color to highlight key scenes and signal shifts in time. For example, the opening full-color scene, one of only a handful of color scenes in the movie, fades into the next scene, in black and white. The shift plunges viewers into 1939, bringing them symbolically closer to the events and characters in the story. This artistic and psychological convention of bringing the audience back in time works well partly because it captures the way many people visualize World War II—through black-and-white images and film footage of the 1930s and 1940s. Although contemporary viewers are accustomed to full-color images and tend to consider such images to be more realistic than those in black and white, the black and white in Schindler’s List conveys an alternate but no less realistic version of life. The movie presents an eclectic mix of styles, such as film noir, which is associated with the great detective stories of the 1940s. The style links the film to that time period and serves to deepen viewers’ immersion in the historical setting.

The artistic advantage of black and white is that it heightens the impact of the film’s violence and highlights the duality of good and evil. The lighting and contrast in the film noir style enhance the brutality of each violent scene. For instance, when the one-armed man is shot in the head in the snowy streets of Kraków, his seemingly black blood spreads through the pure white snow, and the stark contrast in colors emphasizes the split between life and death, good and evil. In some terrifying scenes, such as the evacuation of the Kraków ghetto, the lighting is kept dark, conveying a sense of panic and confusion. The white faces of the dead in the streets contrast starkly against the murky background. The same contrast marks the pile of burning bodies in the Plaszów work camp: the white skulls stand out in the pile of ashes. The women’s faces in the shower scene at Auschwitz are bathed in white light as they stare up in terror at the showerheads. The contrast of light and dark also marks Schindler’s face, which is often half in shadow, reflecting his selfish dark side. His face becomes more fully lighted as he makes the transformation from war profiteer to savior. Schindler’s List might not have had the same visual and emotional impact had Spielberg made the film in color.

<r>Analysis<r>Parallel Editing <r>Summary

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. In the broadest sense, it demonstrates the powerful contrast between happiness and sadness. Two scenes in particular demonstrate the powerful impact of parallel editing that a linear presentation of the story could not have produced. In the first scene, Schindler moves into his luxury apartment in Kraków soon after the Jewish owners are evacuated by the Nazis and sent to the Kraków ghetto. In the second and perhaps most compelling example, three scenes are interwoven: Schindler celebrates his birthday, a wedding takes place in the Plaszów labor camp, and Goeth beats Helen Hirsch.

These expertly edited scenes leave an indelible impression on the viewer for several reasons. Early in the film, Mr. and Mrs. Nussbaum, under the watchful eye of SS officers, grab everything of value they can fit into a suitcase as they are chased from their luxury apartment and forced to join the Jews marching to the Kraków ghetto. These wealthy people are obviously outraged at their treatment. As they make their way to the ghetto, the scene cuts to Schindler entering the very same apartment seemingly moments after the family left. He tours the expansive, richly furnished apartment, admiring the luxurious furnishings and decorations. As he does so, the family arrives in the ghetto to find a tiny, dark, dirty room waiting for them. Sprawled on the Nussbaums’ bed, Schindler says, “It couldn’t possibly be better.” The scene then cuts back to the Nussbaums. Mrs. Nussbaum, with unconvincing optimism, remarks to her husband that “it could be worse.” Mr. Nussbaum responds, “How could it possibly be worse?” By interweaving these moments into a single scene, Spielberg forces the viewer to confront the bitter irony of the situation in which Schindler benefits from the Nussbaums’ misery. In addition, Schindler at this point in the film takes no notice of and has no remorse for the evacuated couple. The tremendous impact of his callousness is intensified in light of the family’s suffering.

Perhaps the most powerful crosscut scene in the film occurs when Schindler celebrates his birthday with a group of Nazis in a nightclub. Here, Schindler’s wantonness rises to new heights as he and the Nazis hold a party in the midst of the evil of the Holocaust surrounding them. But even in dire situations, a celebration proves that hope persists, as Spielberg shows us by splicing this scene with the wedding in the labor camp. But yet a third line of action is cut into this scene, its brutality contrasting with the hope and joy of the wedding and birthday celebrations: Goeth brutally beats Helen Hirsch in her basement room after attempting to seduce her. The contrast between Helen’s desolation and the happiness of the participants in the two celebrations forces viewers to confront the reality of the Jewish situation during the Holocaust, when violence and death were always just around the corner.

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