Viewing Guide – Schindler’s List
Film Lit.
WARNING – In order to better understand this film, you must focus on actors’ FACES.
Get ready for that!
The film Schindler’s List focuses on the years of the Holocaust—a time when millions of
Jews and other men, women, and children were murdered solely because of their ancestry. It is
one of the darkest chapters in human history. Yet an appalling number of people, young and old,
know little if anything about it. Even today the world has not yet learned the lesson of those
terrible years. There are far too many places where hate, intolerance, and genocide still exist.
Thus Schindler’s List is no less a “Jewish story” or a “German story” than it is a human story.
And its subject matter applies to every generation. Schindler’s List is simply about racial
hatred—which is the state of mind that attacks not what makes us people but what makes us
different from each other. It is my hope that Schindler’s List will awaken and sustain an
awareness of such evil and inspire this generation and future generations to seek an end to racial
hatred.
--Steven Spielberg Amblin Entertainment, Inc.
1) Before viewing the film, do a
little research on the following topics
and write down some facts about each:
A) Oskar Schindler
B) Amon Goeth
C) The Final Solution
D) Auschwitz-Birkenau
2) Why might Spielberg choose to begin the film in color and then move to black and white
throughout? (Think interpretively!)
3) Notice how LONG it takes for the audience to see Schindler’s face! We see him getting
ready, dressing, and walking into a restaurant. Why might Spielberg choose to shoot this
scene this way?
4) Discuss the cinematic elements (director’s choices) with the scene where the Jewish
family is moving out of a house slightly before Schindler moves in to that same home.
5) List a three moments of humor or “comic relief” during the film. Are these moments
appropriate?
6) Dramatic irony is when a text’s audience knows MORE than the characters IN that text
do about their own situation. Explain ONE scene in this film where dramatic irony plays
a significant role.
7) Critique (give your opinion) about the “girl in the red coat” scene. Effective? Powerful?
Why or why not?
8) The story of Schindler is ONE small story in the larger story of the Holocaust where 12
million people (6 million being Jewish) were killed. Does this film do that larger story
justice? Is it too much? Too small?
9) Ford Motor Company sponsored an un-cut, during Prime time showing of this film, on
national television, a few years after it was initially released. Was this showing
appropriate, seeing how any children and families could have been exposed to it while
looking for their other, regularly-viewed programs? Why or why not?
10) Aesthetic heat – the term used to describe the idea that an author must be OF a certain
group to be “allowed” to write ABOUT that same group. For example, one must be
Native American to write, accurately, about Native Americans. Steven Spielberg is
Jewish. Can only Jewish film directors make movies of the Holocaust? (I know anyone
CAN, but how does this relate to aesthetic heat?)