Schindler’s Ark
by Australian author
Thomas Keneally
Published in 1982 after
extensive research.
Winner of the 1982
Booker Prize for Fiction
Steven Spielberg read Keneally's
fact-based novel during the filming
of ET, but it was ten years before he
made his vision of a film about the
Holocaust a reality.
Background for Schindler’s Ark
In October 1980, author Thomas Keneally
was on his way back to Australia after a
book signing when he stopped en route to
the airport to buy a new briefcase in a
Beverly Hills luggage shop owned by
Leopold - who had been one of the 1200
saved by Schindler. In the 50 minutes
Keneally spent waiting for his credit card
payment to clear, Pfefferberg persuaded
him to go to the back room where the
shopkeeper kept two cabinets filled with
documents he had collected. Pfefferberg who had told his story to every writer and
producer who ever came into his store eventually wore down Keneally's
reluctance, and the writer chose to make
the story into his next book.
Schindler-Pfefferberg Connection
Poldek Pfefferberg was born in 1913 in Krakow, Poland. He
attended high school in Krakow and earned a master’s
degree in philosophy and physical education from
Krakow University. He taught high school in Krakow until
1939 when the Germans closed all Jewish schools.
Pfefferberg fought in the Polish Army against the Nazis with
the rank of lieutenant and was wounded and arrested.
He escaped and went to his mother's house in Krakow.
One day, in November 1939, a man knocked on the
door, and Pfefferberg thought it was the Gestapo. It
wasn't. It was Oscar Schindler, a Sudeten-German
businessman who had purchased an enamelware
factory that had been confiscated from Jews. Schindler
had come to ask Pfefferberg`s mother, an interior
designer, to redecorate his new apartment.
"I was hiding in the next room", Pfefferberg later said,
"but listening to Schindler, I knew he wasn't Gestapo.
Even then I could tell he was a good man. I began to talk
to him and we became friends."
Poldek Pfefferberg was saved - the rest of his family was
not as lucky - almost 100 perished including his parents,
sister and brother-in-law.
Director Steven Spielberg
•
•
•
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Born Dec. 18, 1947, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Raised by Jewish parents in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona.
Studied English at California State University.
His grades were not good enough to get him into film
school, he landed a job at Universal Studios
lot. He started
.
out directing TV shows, and eventually moved to films.
• By age 30, Spielberg had directed the
two highest grossing movies of all
times: Jaws (1975) and Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
• He is one of the most popular and
prolific directors in history, with films
such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981),
E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993) and
Saving Private Ryan (1998).
• Schindler's List expanded Spielberg's
reputation from a king of high-budget
action films into a director capable of
creating moving human drama.
Important Characters
Ben Kingsley as
Itzak Stern
Liam Neeson
as Schindler
Ralph Fiennes as
Amon Goethe
Spielberg’s intentions for the film:
1. Educate people about the Holocaust.
2. Silence those who deny that the Holocaust
ever happened.
3. Make sure the people never forget so
history is not repeated.
Spielberg expected that the film’s main appeal would be to
the school market, but Schindler’s List was a hit in
theaters (50 million saw the film in theaters, another 65
million during a special airing on national television).
1993
- Best Picture
- Best Director
- Best Art Direction
- Best Cinematography
- Best Film Editing
- Best Music (Original Score)
- Best Writing ( Screenplay based on material
previously produced or published)
Why black and white?
• Appropriate to the WWII era.
• Allows sparing use of color
to emphasize certain scenes.
• Film noir styles heightens
violence, highlights theme of
good vs. evil.
• Schindler’s face is often hidden in shadow,
and becomes more open as he leaves his
selfish motives behind.
Parallel editing, or crosscutting, is a
cinematic convention in which two or
more concurrent scenes are interwoven
with each other.
• Illustrates the contrast between the
easy life of the Nazis and the
desperation of the Jews. Also, we see
the bitter irony in how one group is
gaining (“It couldn’t possibly be
better.”) as the other loses (“How could
it possibly be worse?”).
Two examples:
–Schindler moves into the
Nussbaums’ apt. as they move
into the ghetto.
–Schindler’s birthday party, a
wedding in the camp and Amon
Goethe’s brutal beating of Helen
Hirsch.
Trivia
•
Director Steven Speilberg was unable to get permission
to film inside Auschwitz, so the scenes of the death camp
were actually filmed outside the gates on a set
constructed in a mirror image of the real location on the
other side.
•
Co-producer Branko Lustig plays the nightclub maître d'
in Schindler's first scene. Lustig is an Auschwitz survivor
and has produced other movies about the Holocaust
•
The producer Branko Lustig was a real life holocaust
survivor of Auschwitz, having been imprisoned there as a
boy. Accepting his Oscar, he recited his serial number
A3317.
•
To gather costumes for 20,000 extras, the costume
designer took out advertisements seeking clothes. As
economic conditions were poor in Poland, many people
were eager to sell clothing they still owned from the
1930s and '40s.
•
The original missing list of Schindler's Jews was found in
a suitcase together with his written legacy hidden in the
attic of Schindler's flat in Hildesheim in 1999. Schindler
stayed there during the last few months before his death
in 1974.
•
The Krakow ghetto "liquidation" scene was only a page of
action in the script, but Steven Spielberg turned it into 20
pages and 20 minutes of screen action "based on living
witness testimony". For example, the scene in which the
young man escapes capture by German soldiers by telling
them he was ordered to clear the luggage from the street
was taken directly from a survivor's story.
•
For the epilogue scene, all actors are required to
accompany the original Schindlerjuden they portrayed in
the movie in pairs (actor and the Jew they portrayed
carrying and placing a pebble on the grave). This actually
explains why Liam Neeson was the one placing the
flowers on the stone before the end credits roll in.
•
There is a Jewish tradition that when one visits a grave,
one leaves a small stone on the marker as a sign of
respect. This is why the cast and the Schindlerjuden cover
Schindler's grave with stones at the end of the movie.
•
The girl in the red dress was a real girl named Roma
Ligocka. Unlike her film counterpart, she survived the war,
and wrote a memoir titled "The Girl in the Red Coat: A
Memoir".
•
Helen Hirsch is based on Helen Jonas (nee
Sternlicht), whose story in shown in the
documentary Inheritance