Schindler's List: Difference between revisions

Schindler's List
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Written by	Steven Zaillian (Screenplay) Based on Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally
Produced by	Steven Spielberg, Branko Lustig, Gerald R. Molen
Starring	Liam Neeson Ralph Fiennes Ben Kingsley
Cinematography	Janusz Kaminski
Music by	John Williams
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	December 15, 1993 (USA)
Running time	195 min
Language	English
Budget	$25,000,000 USD (estimated)

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.

Template:Spoiler The movie begins with a depiction of a Jewish prayer. At the end of the prayer, a candle burns out, and the film changes from color to black and white.

The Polish Army has been defeated by the German Army in the initiating event of 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 Kraków, and submitting their names to German officials waiting on the station platforms with typewriters and lists.

As this is happening, a newcomer has arrived in Kraków; his name is Oskar Schindler. Schindler, a heretofore unsuccessful businessman from Germany, 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 occupation 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 Krakow, Julian Scherner, and quickly calls in favors as Schindler begins to establish himself as a businessman in the Krakow region.

With his military sponsors in his back pocket, he sets out to acquire a factory for the production of enamelware, mainly cookery. In his factory he is told to manufacture goods such as pots, pans, and cooking materials for the war effort. He hasn't the money to buy it, and his administrative skills are dubious at best, but he finds through his contact 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 Jewish 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. 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 starts the factory; he keeps the Nazis happy and enjoys his new-found wealth, while Stern actually operates the factory and uses his position to help his fellow Jews, who have now been confined to a ghetto within Krakow. 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 infirm — people who would otherwise be rounded up and sent away. Schindler becomes aware of what is going on, and seems embarrassed by the whole arrangement, but takes no action to stop it.

At this point, an SS officer named Amon Göth arrives in Kraków to initiate construction of a labor camp, Płaszów, and to take over control of the Ghetto. In what is considered by many one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, a Jewish engineer explains that a foundation has been improperly laid, and for this he has her shot in the head. He then, in the next breath, orders that everything she requested be done. Göth is the focus of the film's depiction of Nazi sadism and inhumanity, not only taking pleasure in murder and torture, but considering it an integral part of his job, a matter of duty.^{[citation needed]}

In due course, Göth razes the Kraków Ghetto, sending in hundreds of troops to clear the cramped rooms and shooting anyone who refuses or cannot leave. Schindler watches the massacre from the hills overlooking the ghetto, and is profoundly affected. But, he now faces the more immediate problem of how to run his factory without his workers. He meets Göth, 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 clearing of the ghetto, Schindler sees a girl in a red coat, which is depicted in color 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. 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, Schindler makes a further transformation into an altruistic angel whose primary motive is not profit, but rather to save the lives of his workers.^{[citation needed]}

In the labor camp, a prisoner suggests that the "unessential" Jews are taken off to concentration camps to be killed, but some of people hearing this reject the idea as ridiculous. One old woman exclaims, "We are their work force! Why would they want to kill their own work force?"

To Amon Göth's considerable consternation, and to Schindler's horror, an order arrives from Berlin commanding Göth to exhume and destroy all bodies of those killed in the ghetto razing, to dismantle Płaszów, 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 Göth to let him keep his workers, so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), away from the Holocaust — now fully underway in Poland. Göth acquiesces, for a payoff in the order 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 his workers.

This list of "skilled" inmates was Schindler's List, and for many of the inmates of Plaszow camp, being on the list meant the difference between life and death. Except for a railway mishap, in which one of the trains carrying women was accidentally redirected to Auschwitz, all the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site. Those who went to Auschwitz were soon returned by a train which was sent to Schindler's camp, after Schindler bribes another Nazi official. Once the workers 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 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 that explains he is not a criminal and a ring engraved with the Talmudic quotation, "whoever saves one life saves the world entire." Schindler is wracked with guilt, seeing his car, and realizing he could have bribed ten more people from Göth for it. He pulls the Nazi Party pin from his lapel, and cries, "This is gold. I could have gotten one more person for this. He would have given me one ... One more person." 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.

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, "You have been liberated by the Soviet Army!"

The film ends in present-day Israel at the grave of Oskar Schindler. 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, revealing a long line of people.

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^{[citation needed]}, 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.

Tagline: Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

The movie was directed by famed director Steven Spielberg, who later spoke of the making of the movie as affecting him deeply. It was produced 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 Göth. Its tagline was simply, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire" a quote from the Talmud. Critically acclaimed, the film won praise for depicting—often in exceptional, graphic detail—the horrifying brutality of the Holocaust.

Nominated for twelve Academy Awards, this movie 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 renowned Israeli violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Several notable differences between the book and movie are: -

1. The movie omits any mention of Oskar Schindler collecting guns for the Jews to defend themselves from the SS guards; there were 2 mentions of it in the book, one of them one-half page long. It was described as an 'independent arsenal' containing carbines and automatic weapons, some pistols, and some hand grenades.
2. 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. The guards then turn away. In the book, Schindler had gotten the SS commander 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.
3. The insane rages and cruelty of Amon Göth was not adequately represented in the movie; sometimes Göth would sic his two dogs, Ralf and Rolf, upon prisoners, who would be torn apart. Göth would shoot the victim in the head when he/she stopped moving.

In the years since its release, Schindler's List has risen in status to be considered one of the greatest movies of the 1990s, if not of all time. 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. As well, the American Film Institute voted Liam Neeson's Schindler as the 13th greatest movie hero of all time, while Ralph Fiennes's Göth was voted the 15th greatest villain in the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains series. In 2004, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Following the critical and box office success of Schindler's List, 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.

However, the Holocaust historian David M. Crowe has questioned in a new book the authenticity of the facts portrayed in the movie. "Schindler had nothing to do with the list," the author writes in the new biography of the German businessman. Oskar Schindler was in jail for bribing the SS commander Amon Göth when the famous list was being drawn up and had little involvement in it, according to a New York Times report. From the total of nine lists, four were drawn up primarily by Marcel Goldberg, a corrupt Jewish assistant to the SS officer in charge of transporting Jews, Crowe wrote.

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall
• Writing credits: Thomas Keneally (novel), Steven Zaillian (screenplay)
• Composer: John Williams
• Editor: Michael Kahn
• Producer: Branko Lustig, Gerald R. Molen, Steven Spielberg for Amblin Entertainment / Universal Pictures.

• Stellan Skarsgard was considered to play Oskar Schindler. Coincidentally, Skarsgard claims he is often mistaken for Liam Neeson, who played Schindler.

• Ralph Fiennes' performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. While he didn't win the Oscar, he did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award, which is the British equivalent to the Oscar.

• According to a book review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 2005-09-25, the movie character of Itzhak Stern is partly modeled after Mietek Pemper, an inmate who served as secretary to Amon Göth. 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).

• Originally, 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.

• Director Steven Spielberg refused payment for making this movie, saying that it would be like "taking blood money."

• Martin Scorsese was originally to direct the film, but feeling it should be made by a Jewish director, traded it to Steven Spielberg in exchange for the rights to remake Cape Fear. Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment produced that film.

In February of 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 on Sunday February 23. 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."

• Life Is Beautiful, a tragicomic film about life in a Nazi concentration camp.
• The Pianist
• Hotel Rwanda, a film depicting the 1994 Rwandan Genocide with a hero who also saves the lives of potential genocide victims.
• List of Jews
• Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
• List of recent films in black-and-white

Wikiquote has quotations related to Schindler's List.

• Filmsite review of the movie
• Schindler's List at IMDb
• Schindler's List, the movie's website
• 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 rescuers bibliography.
• Schindler's List at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films lists