Schindler's List (1993)

Schindler's List (1993)

In director Steven Spielberg's (and Universal Pictures') Best Picture-winning, unanimously-praised historical epic of the Holocaust with crisp black and white cinematography, it was the director's greatest dramatic masterpiece. It included stunning and brilliant performances by the three male leads - Schindler (Liam Nesson), Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), and Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). The film was skillfully rendered with overlapping dialogue, parallel editing, sharp and bold characterizations, contrasting compositions of the two main characters (Schindler and Goeth), cinematographic beauty detailing shadows and light with film-noirish tones, jerky hand-held cameras (cinema verite), a beautifully selected and composed musical score (including Itzhak Perlman's violin), and gripping performances.

It was based on a true story of an opportunistic German businessman and charming womanizer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who profited from WWII by employing cheap labor from Polish Jews in his Krakow enamel cookware factory (the Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik or D.E.F.) during the Third Reich's Holocaust. He provided them with refuge from the horrors of the Nazis. The film also documented the hideous, disturbing evil personified by Nazi Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) - the Plaszow camp commandant, and Schindler's relationship with his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). Their list-making courageously saved over 1,000 Jews from a senseless, brutal extermination in Auschwitz.

The screenplay by Steven Zaillian was adapted from Thomas Keneally's 1982 biographic novel (Schindler's Ark), constructed by interviews with 50 Schindler survivors found in many nations, and other wartime associates of the title character, as well as other written testimonies and sources.

The exceptional film received 12 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor (Liam Neeson), Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Sound, Best Makeup, and Best Costume Design, and won 7 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Musical Score (John Williams), Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), and Best (Adapted) Screenplay. With a budget of 22ドル million, the film grossed revenues of 96ドル.9 million (domestic) and 322ドル.2 million (worldwide).

• at the start of WWII in 1939, the defeated population of Polish Jews (Hebrews) had been relocated by the Nazi German forces into the Krakow Ghetto
• in the opening restaurant/cabaret scene, set in German-occupied Poland during World War II, would-be war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman, wheeled and dealed his way into the pocketbooks of SS officers in a Krakow nightclub; first, in his Krakow hotel room, the mysterious, unknown man (not yet with his face unrevealed) dressed himself and prepared for the evening; he pinned, in close-up, a gold, Nazi Party button (with swastika or Hakenkreuz) on his lapel
• the slickly-dressed gentleman entered a swanky nightclub in the Nazi-occupied city of Krakow and was seated at a prime table; the authoritative, aristocratic-looking Oskar Schindler, not yet identified by name, was a war profiteer who was about to wheel and deal his way into the pocketbooks of SS officers; he sized up the power elite to cultivate their friendship; the gracious host purchased endless plates of food, caviar, and French wines for the rowdy guests in his party; Schindler's self-promotion was successful
• in the city, Schindler contacted Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a financially-skilled official of Krakow's Judenrat (Hebrew Council), to collaborate with him to secretly finance, administer and run his business operation - using his contacts in the Hebrew business community and in the black marketers [Note: Jews could no longer own or operate their own businesses.]; Stern's talent would be to recruit Jewish investors for capital, to provide 'free' Jewish workers (as cheap labor) from the population, and to manage the business and financial side of the operation
• by 1941, thousands of Jewish families had been ordered by the Nazis to move out of their residences and into a specified area known as the Ghetto, an area of only sixteen square blocks; Schindler was ushered in to take posession of one of the newly-vacated apartments of a well-off Jewish family
• meanwhile, Schindler was setting up a metalworks, cookware and enamelware factory-business (using cheap Jewish labor) to supply the German military with basics, such as pot and pans, door hinges, mess kits, etc.; the "essential" Jewish workers would be saved from being sent off to concentration camps or killed, although Stern also forged documents and provided work certificates to rescue from extermination those who would be considered 'not essential'
• in a slightly amusing sequence, Schindler hired eighteen of the prettiest, most 'qualified' young ladies as secretaries - and was posed with them by a photographer outside the re-possessed plant; the ultimate con-artist, he also continued to entertain - and seduce - SS German officers with rich food, caviar and drink in his apartment, to stimulate bids and purchase contracts; he bragged about having 350 workers on his factory payroll
• there were many scenes of random and indiscriminate killings of innocent Jews; on one snowy morning, as Schindler's workers were marched out of the ghetto gate, under armed guard, to the factory for their work day, a one-armed worker was murdered at point-blank range with a gun; shortly later, Diana Reiter (Elina Lowensohn), an educated female construction engineer supervising the construction of a half-finished barracks at Plaszow, was also brutally and senselessly exterminated
• in the winter of 1942, SS Lieutenant Amon Goethe (Ralph Fiennes), the commandant for a new labor camp in Plaszow, gave a chilling speech to his officers, on the extermination and liquidation of Jews in the Ghetto in Krakow, Poland after the completion of the Plaszow concentration labor camp:
  • "Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now, the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history, and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Kazimierz the Great, so-called, told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. They came here with nothing. Nothing. And they flourished. For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Krakow. Think about that. By this evening, those six centuries are a rumour. They never happened. Today is history."
• subsequently, the film documented the brutal clearing and liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto in March of 1943; hundreds of troops arbitrarily murdered and executed thousands of Jews; there was an indelible image of a girl in a drab red coat walking amidst the murderous chaos as Krakow's ghetto was destroyed
  • [Note: The girl's body was later spotted on a cart piled with corpses.]
• the final chapter of the Krakow ghetto liquidation scene occurred that evening, with a night-time hunt by special squads of SS killers for Jews still in hiding in the ghetto apartments; thousands were transported to the new camp, while many others were slaughtered in the streets
• to illustrate Goeth's savage and barbaric nature, the shirtless, overweight and sadistic Goeth randomly fired his telescopic rifle from his villa's balcony perch above the Plaszow work camp at innocent prisoners
• meanwhile, for their first encounter, Schindler met with and attempted to befriend the high ranking Goeth, through bribery and other means, to maintain SS support; Schindler concluded ther conversation, asking:
  • "You could make things easier for me. (Goeth shrugged) I'd be grateful"
• for a price, he was allowed to let some of the labor camp inhabitants go back to work for him in his factory in Krakow, so that he could continue to profit from them; as a result, five hundred Plaszow worker/prisoners were marched back into the factory gates of the D.E.F. to re-establish Schindler's workforce
• as time passed, Schindler began to take risks to keep some of the Jews from being executed or sent away to concentration camps, and to try and save as many lives as possible
• after a party at Goeth's villa, Schindler delivered a speech to the drunken Goeth about power with restraint, convincing Goeth to offer pardons instead of deadly justice:
  • "Power is when we have every justification to kill - and we don't"
• although Goeth temporarily experimented with giving out pardons, he soon reverted to his murderous impulses; a pardon was not as powerful or pleasing as sporting target practice
• in the villa's basement living quarters in a disturbing sexually-confrontational scene, the lusting Goeth circled around his glisteningly-sweaty, nubile and trembling Jewish housekeeper Helen (Embeth Davidtz) in a flimsy, clinging chemise; he wanted to both threaten and seduce her; but then he remembered that she was supposed to be detested like a rat; pathologically filled with deep self-loathing, he beat the tempting young Jewess for seducing him:
  • "You're a Jewish bitch. You nearly talked me into it, didn't you?"
• in the next scene in the upstairs offices of the D.E.F., Schindler celebrated his birthday - with a questionable sustained kiss from a young Jewess worker who brought him a homemade cake
• in a medical examination sequence at the train depot in Plaszow, it was announced that a shipment of Hungarians to the camp meant a reduction in the size of the Plaszow work force: "We've got to separate the sick from the healthy to make room"; the healthy were winnowed out from the unfit by having prisoners run naked before doctors; in addition, innocently-happy children were lured from the barracks, and placed in large transport trucks; some children fled and hid waist-deep in latrine excrement
• Schindler was briefly arrested and jailed for violating the Race and Resettlement Act, for kissing the young Jewish girl at his party; Goeth intervened and defended the racial improprieties of Schindler's action, allowing him to be released
• in April of 1944, Goeth was ordered to exhume and incinerate the bodies of more than 10,000 Jews killed at Plaszow and the Krakow Ghetto massacre; it was a way for the Nazis to cover up the evidence of the slaughter of Jews; as Schindler spoke to Goeth, he glimpsed one of the wheelbarrows which held the red-coated corpse of the little girl seen earlier
• as the Germans began to lose the war, both Stern and Schindler felt resigned to their fates; Schindler was wearied, fearing that he would lose his Jewish workers; Goeth was being pressured to ship the remaining Hebrews at Plaszow to the Auschwitz concentration camp
• at a major turning point in his life, Schindler was transformed from a profiteer to a savior of his Jews from slaughter; Schindler negotiated with Goeth to move his workers to a military munitions factory in the town of Brunnlitz (instead of executing them), but then had to pay an enormous bribe for each chosen and saved worker; Stern laborously compiled and typed 'Schindler's List' (of 1,100 names) as Schindler desperately paced the room; Stern eloquently summed it up:
  • "The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf"
• almost all of the people on Schindler's list (including Goeth's maid Helen, the last name on the list) arrived safely at the new site via train; in one of the most intense sequences, however, a boxcar of his female workers was accidentally rerouted and arrived at Auschwitz, where they were led into what they believed was a lethal shower-gassing; the hair of Schindler's women was shorn, and they were stripped naked of their clothing - and identity; although fearful of dying, they wept with relief when they realized they were in the delousing plant of Auschwitz and not the gas chamber
• to save his female workers at Auschwitz, Schindler had to intervene, and was forced to purchase them twice in order to liberate them; the next day at the train yard, as the names from Schindler's List were being called out, Schindler stepped forward to prevent guards from detaining the children of the women, arguing forcefully:
  • "What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled munitions workers. They're essential. Essential girls. Their fingers polish the insides of shell metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell casing? You tell me. You tell me!"
• for the remainder of the war, Schindler was forced to continue bribing Nazi officials; privately, he had decided to manufacture only defective munitions and sabotage the German war effort; eventually he went bankrupt; he had spent all his fortune to save his Jews
• following the war in 1945 soon after the unconditional surrender of Germany, Schindler gave an emotional final and farewell address to his 1,200 workers and guards; he described his own peril, due to his Nazi Party membership and self-described position as a "profiteer of slave labor"; Schindler would be forced to flee the advancing Red Army:
  • "...After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. (sighing) I'm a member of the Nazi party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight. After which time, and I hope you'll forgive me, I have to flee"

• then, at the end of his speech, he convincibly urged the SS guards (who had been ordered to kill the Jews) to return to their families as men, not murderers:
  • ..."This is your opportunity. (murmuring) Or, you could leave, and return to your families as men instead of murderers. (The guards left) In memory of the countless victims among your people, I ask us to observe three minutes of silence."
• now a fugitive, Oskar Schindler prepared to flee westward (wearing Polish prisoner clothes and posing as a refugee); some of his most loyal workers bid him goodbye, and gave him a letter, exonerating him; he was also presented with a golden ring secretly made from a worker's gold dental bridge; it was engraved with a Talmudic quotation:
  • "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire"
• before leaving, he also gave a heart-wrenching goodbye to his accountant Itzhak Stern, ashamed and sorrowful that he didn't do more:
  • "I could've got more... I didn't do enough"

• in the film's epilogue, it summarized post-war events (including the hanging-execution of Amon Goeth) and Schindler's later life ("Oskar Schindler failed at his marriage and several businesses after the war"
• the final coda (in color) paired actual elderly survivors (Schindler Hebrews) in the present-day with their counterpart actors-actresses as they placed rocks on the real-life grave of Schindler in Jerusalem, to express their gratitude:
  • "There are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than six thousand descendants of the Schindler Jews. In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered."