Schindler's List Film Notes
This article is about the film. For the book that inspired this film (published in the USA as
Schindler's List), see Schindler's Ark. For the actual list, see List of Schindlerjuden.
Schindler's List
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Produced by
Gerald R. Molen
Branko Lustig
Screenplay by
Based on
Starring
Steven Zaillian
Schindler's Ark by
Thomas Keneally
Liam Neeson
Ben Kingsley
Ralph Fiennes
Caroline Goodall
Jonathan Sagall
Embeth Davidtz
Music by
John Williams
Cinematography
Janusz Kamiński
Editing by
Michael Kahn
Studio
Amblin Entertainment
Distributed by
Universal Pictures
Release date(s)
30 November 1993 (DC)
1 December 1993
Running time
195 minutes
Country
United States
English
Hebrew
Language
German
Polish
French
Budget
$22,000,000[1]
Box office
$321,000,000
Schindler's List is a 1993 American film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who
saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by
employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the
novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as
Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS)-officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as
Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.
The film was a box office success and recipient of seven Academy Awards, including Best
Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, as well as numerous other awards (7 BAFTAs, 3
Golden Globes). In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked the film 8th on its list of the 100
best American films of all time (up one position from its 9th place listing on the 1998 list).
Contents
[hide]
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1 Plot
2 Cast
o 2.1 Main
o 2.2 Secondary
3 Production
o 3.1 Development
o 3.2 Casting
o 3.3 Filming
o 3.4 Cinematography
o 3.5 Music
4 Symbols
o 4.1 The girl in the red coat
o 4.2 Candles
5 Release
6 Reception
7 Awards
o 7.1 Academy Award
o 7.2 Golden Globe Award
 7.2.1 Won
 7.2.2 Nominated
o 7.3 American Film Institute recognition
8 Controversies
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
[edit] Plot
The film begins in 1939 with the German-initiated relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding
areas to the Kraków Ghetto shortly after the beginning of World War II. Meanwhile, Oskar
Schindler (Liam Neeson), an ethnic German businessman from Moravia, arrives in the city in
hopes of making his fortune as a war profiteer. Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, lavishes
bribes upon the Wehrmacht and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the
military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much
about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a close collaborator in Itzhak Stern (Ben
Kingsley), an official of Krakow's Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the Jewish
business community and the black marketers inside the Ghetto. The Jewish businessmen lend
Schindler the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced. Opening the
factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his newfound wealth and status as "Herr
Direktor", while Stern handles all the administration. Schindler hires Jewish Poles instead of
Catholic Poles because they cost less (the workers themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to
the SS). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern falsifies
documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war
effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or being killed.
SS-Lieutenant (Untersturmführer) Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) arrives in Kraków to oversee
construction of the new Płaszów concentration camp. Once the camp is completed, he orders the
final liquidation of the ghetto and Operation Reinhard in Kraków begins, with hundreds of troops
emptying the cramped rooms and arbitrarily murdering anyone who protests or appears
uncooperative, elderly or infirm. Schindler, watching the massacre from the hills overlooking the
area with his mistress, is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Goeth and,
through Stern's attention to bribery, Schindler continues to enjoy SS support and protection.
During this time, Schindler bribes Goeth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers,
so that he can keep his factory running smoothly and protect them from being randomly
executed. As time passes, Schindler acts on information provided by Stern to try and save as
many lives as he can. As the war shifts, Goeth receives orders from Berlin commanding him to
exhume and destroy the remains of every Jew murdered in the Kraków Ghetto, dismantle
Płaszów, and ship the remaining Jews—including Schindler's workers—to the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
At first, Schindler prepares to leave Kraków with his fortune. He finds himself unable to do so,
however, and prevails upon Goeth to allow him to keep his workers so that he can move them to
a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia away from the Final Solution, now
fully underway in occupied Poland. Goeth eventually acquiesces, but charges a massive bribe for
each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers who are to be kept off the trains to
Auschwitz.
"Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in Płaszów camp,
being included means the difference between life and death. Almost all of the people on
Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site. The train carrying the Jewish women is accidentally
redirected to Auschwitz. The women are taken to what they believe to be the gas chambers; they
then weep with joy and immense relief when water falls from the showers. The day after, the
women are shown waiting in line for work and being inspected by the camp physician, Dr. Josef
Mengele. In the meantime, Schindler rushes immediately to Auschwitz. Intending to rescue all
the women, he bribes the camp commander, Rudolf Höß, with a cache of diamonds in exchange
for releasing the women to Brinnlitz. However, a last minute problem arises just when all the
women are boarding the train. Several SS officers attempt to hold back the children and prevent
them from leaving. Schindler, however, insists that he needs their hands to polish the narrow
insides of artillery shells. As a result, the children are released. Once the women arrive in
Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler institutes firm controls on the SS guards assigned to the factory,
forbidding them to enter the production areas. He permits and encourages the Jews to observe the
Sabbath. In order to keep his factory workers alive, he spends much of his fortune bribing Nazi
officials and buying shells from other companies, meaning he never actually produces working
shells for the seven months his factory is in business. Later, he surprises his wife while she is in
the village church during mass, and tells her that she will now be the only woman in his life, a
concession he had refused to grant previously. She goes with him to the factory to assist him. He
runs out of money just as the Wehrmacht surrenders, ending the war in Europe.
As a Nazi Party member and a self-described "profiteer of slave labour", in 1945, Schindler must
flee the advancing Red Army. Although the SS guards have been ordered to liquidate the Jews of
Brinnlitz, Schindler persuades them to return to their families as men, not murderers. In the
aftermath, he packs a car in the night and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter
explaining he is not a criminal to them, together with a ring secretly made from a worker's gold
dental bridge and engraved with a Talmudic quotation, "Whoever saves one life saves the world
entire." Schindler is touched but deeply ashamed, feeling he could have done more to save many
more lives, such as selling his car, and selling his Golden Party Badge could have saved one
more. Weeping, he considers how many more lives he could have saved as he leaves with his
wife during the night.
The Schindler Jews, having slept outside the factory gates through the night, are awakened by
sunlight the next morning. A Soviet dragoon arrives and announces to the Jews that they have
been liberated by the Red Army. The Jews walk to a nearby town in search of food.
After a few scenes depicting post-war events and locations, such as the execution of Amon
Goeth by hanging for war crimes and a brief summary of what eventually happened to Schindler
in his later years, the film returns to the Jews walking to the nearby town. As they walk abreast,
the black-and-white frame changes to one in color of present-day Schindler Jews at Schindler's
grave site in Jerusalem (where he wanted to be interred).[2] The film ends by showing a
procession of now-elderly Jews who worked in Schindler's factory, each of whom reverently sets
a stone on his grave—a traditional Jewish custom denoting deep gratitude or thanks to the
deceased. The actors portraying the major characters walk hand-in-hand with the people they
portrayed, placing their stones as they pass. (Ben Kingsley is accompanied by the widow of
Itzhak Stern, who died in 1969.) The audience learns that, at the time of the film's release, there
were fewer than 4,000 Jews left alive in Poland, but more than 6,000 descendants of the
Schindler Jews throughout the world. In the final scene, Liam Neeson (although his face is not
visible) places a pair of roses on the grave and stands contemplatively over it.
The film concludes with a statement, "In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered";
the closing credits begin with a view of a road paved with headstones culled from Jewish
cemeteries during the war (as depicted in the film), before fading to black.
[edit] Cast
[edit] Main
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Liam Neeson – Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saves the lives of over 1,100
Jews by employing them in his factory.
Ben Kingsley – Itzhak Stern, Schindler's accountant and business partner.
Ralph Fiennes – Amon Goeth, the main antagonist in the film; Goeth is an SS officer
assigned to build and run the Płaszów concentration camp, and is befriended by Schindler,
though he grows steadily suspicious of Schindler's true aims as the film progresses.
Embeth Davidtz – Helen Hirsch, a young Jewish woman whom Goeth takes to work as his
housekeeper, and finds attractive.
Caroline Goodall – Emilie Schindler, Schindler's wife.
Jonathan Sagall – Poldek Pfefferberg, a young man who survives with his wife, and provides
goods to Schindler from the black market.
[edit] Secondary
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Ezra Dagan – Rabbi Lewartow, a rabbi who acquires skills as a welder in Schindler's camp.
Malgoscha Gebel – Wiktoria Klonowska, Schindler's mistress.
Shmuel Levy – Wilek Chilowicz.
Mark Ivanir – Marcel Goldberg.
Béatrice Macola – Ingrid.
Andrzej Seweryn – Julian Scherner.
Friedrich von Thun – Rolf Czurda.
Krzysztof Luft – Herman Toffel.
Harry Nehring – Leo John.
Norbert Weisser – Albert Hujar.
Adi Nitzan – Mila Pfefferberg, Poldek Pfefferberg's wife.
Michael Schneider – Juda Dresner.
Miri Fabian – Chaja Dresner.
Anna Mucha – Danka Dresner.
Ben Darby – Man in grey.
Albert Misak – Mordecai Wulkan.
Hans-Michael Rehberg – Rudolf Höss.
Daniel Del Ponte – Dr. Josef Mengele.
[edit] Production
[edit] Development
Poldek Pfefferberg was one of the Schindlerjuden, and made it his life's mission to tell the story
of his savior. Pfefferberg attempted to produce a biopic of Oskar Schindler with MGM in
1963,[3] with Howard Koch writing,[4] but the deal fell through. In 1982, Thomas Keneally
published Schindler's Ark, which he wrote after he met Pfefferberg. MCA president Sid
Sheinberg sent director Steven Spielberg a New York Times review of the book. Spielberg was
astounded by the story of Oskar Schindler, jokingly asking if it was true. Spielberg "was drawn
to the paradoxical nature of [Schindler]... It was about a Nazi saving Jews... What would drive a
man like this to suddenly take everything he had earned and put it all in the service of saving
these lives?" Spielberg expressed enough interest for Universal Pictures to buy the rights to the
novel, and in early 1983 Spielberg met with Pfefferberg. Pfefferberg asked Spielberg, "Please,
when are you starting?" Spielberg replied, "Ten years from now."[3] (In the end credits of the
film, Pfefferberg is credited as an advisor, under the name "Leopold Page.")
Spielberg was unsure of his own maturity in making a film about the Holocaust, and the project
remained "on [his] guilty conscience". Spielberg tried to pass the project to director Roman
Polanski, who turned it down. Polanski's mother was killed at Auschwitz,[5] and he had lived in
and survived the Kraków Ghetto. Polanski eventually directed his own Holocaust film, The
Pianist, in 2002. Spielberg also offered the film to Sydney Pollack,[4] and Martin Scorsese, who
was attached to direct Schindler's List in 1988. However, Spielberg was unsure of letting
Scorsese direct the film, as "I'd given away a chance to do something for my children and family
about the Holocaust." Spielberg offered him the chance to direct the 1991 remake of Cape Fear
instead.[4] Billy Wilder expressed interest in directing the film "as a memorial to most of [his]
family, who went to Auschwitz."
Spielberg finally decided to direct the film after hearing of the Bosnian Genocide and various
Holocaust deniers.[3] With the rise of neo-Nazism after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he worried that
people were too accepting of intolerance, as they were in the 1930s. In addition, Spielberg was
becoming more involved with his Jewish heritage while raising his children.[6] Sid Sheinberg
greenlit the film on one condition: that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg later said,
"He knew that once I had directed Schindler I wouldn't be able to do Jurassic Park."[4]
In 1983, Thomas Keneally was hired to adapt his book, and he turned in a 220-page script.
Keneally focused on Schindler's numerous relationships, and admitted he did not compress the
story enough. Spielberg hired Kurt Luedtke, who had adapted the screenplay of Out of Africa, to
write the next draft. Luedtke gave up almost four years later, as he found Schindler's change of
heart too unbelievable. During his time as director, Scorsese hired Steven Zaillian to write the
script. When he was handed back the project, Spielberg found Zaillian's 115-page draft too short,
and asked him to extend it to 195 pages. Spielberg wanted to focus on the Jews in the story. He
extended the ghetto liquidation sequence, as he "felt very strongly that the sequence had to be
almost unwatchable." He wanted Schindler's transition to be gradual and ambiguous, and not
"some kind of explosive catharsis that would turn this into The Great Escape."[4]
[edit] Casting
Liam Neeson auditioned as Oskar Schindler early in the casting process and was cast in
December 1992, after Spielberg saw him perform in Anna Christie on Broadway.[4] Warren
Beatty participated in a script reading, but Spielberg was concerned that he could not disguise his
accent and that he would bring "movie star baggage".[7] Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson
expressed interest in portraying Schindler.[4] Neeson felt "[Schindler] enjoyed fookin' [sic] with
the Nazis. In Keneally's book it says he was regarded as a kind of a buffoon by them... if the
Nazis were New Yorkers, he was from Arkansas. They don't quite take him seriously, and he
used that to full effect."[8] To prepare for the role, Neeson was sent tapes of Time Warner CEO
Steve Ross, who had a charisma that Spielberg compared to Schindler's.[9]
Ralph Fiennes was cast as Amon Goeth after Spielberg viewed his performances in A Dangerous
Man: Lawrence After Arabia and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Spielberg said of Fiennes'
audition that "I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that
would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold." Fiennes put on 28 lbs to play the role.
He watched historic newsreels and talked to Holocaust survivors who knew Amon Göth. In
portraying him, Fiennes said "I got close to his pain. Inside him is a fractured, miserable human
being. I feel split about him, sorry for him. He's like some dirty, battered doll I was given and
that I came to feel peculiarly attached to." Fiennes looked so much like Amon Göth in costume
that when Mila Pfefferberg, a survivor of the events, met him she trembled with fear.[10]
Overall, there are 126 speaking parts in the film. Thirty thousand extras were hired during
filming. Spielberg cast children of the Schindlerjuden for key Hebrew-speaking roles and hired
Catholic Poles for the survivors.[4] Often, German actors playing the SS would come to Spielberg
and say, "Thank you for letting me resolve my [family] secrets by playing in your movie."[7]
Halfway during the shoot, Spielberg conceived the epilogue where 128 Schindlerjuden pay their
respects to Schindler's grave in Jerusalem. The producers scrambled to find the people portrayed
in the film.[4]
[edit] Filming
Shooting for Schindler's List began on March 1, 1993 in Kraków (Cracow), Poland, and
continued for seventy-one days.[3] The crew shot at the real life locations, though the Płaszów
camp had to be reconstructed in a pit adjacent to the original site, due to post-war changes to the
original camp. The crew was forbidden to enter Auschwitz, so they shot at a replica outside the
camp.[9] The Polish locals welcomed the filmmakers. There were some antisemitic incidents;
anti-Semitic symbols scrawled on local billboards near shooting locations.[4] An elderly woman
mistook Fiennes for a Nazi and told him "the Germans were charming people. They didn't kill
anybody who didn't deserve it",[10] while Kingsley nearly entered a brawl with an elderly
German-speaking businessman who insulted Israeli actor Michael Schneider.[11] Nonetheless,
Spielberg stated that at Passover, "all the German actors showed up. They put on yarmulkes and
opened up Haggadas, and the Israeli actors moved right next to them and began explaining it to
them. And this family of actors sat around and race and culture were just left behind."[11]
"I was hit in the face with my personal life. My upbringing. My Jewishness. The stories my grandparents told
me about the Shoah. And Jewish life came pouring back into my heart. I cried all the time."
Steven Spielberg on his emotional state during the shoot[5]
Shooting Schindler's List was a deeply emotional time for Spielberg, as the subject matter forced
him to confront elements of his childhood, such as the antisemitism he faced. He was furious
with himself when he did not "cry buckets" while visiting Auschwitz, and was one of many crew
members who did not look on during shooting of the scene where aging Jews are forced to run
naked while being selected by Nazi doctors to go to Auschwitz.[9] Several actresses broke down
when filming the shower scene, including one who was born in a concentration camp.[7] Kate
Capshaw and Spielberg's five children accompanied Spielberg on set, and he later thanked his
wife "for rescuing me ninety-two days in a row...when things just got too unbearable."
Spielberg's parents and his rabbi visited him on set. Robin Williams called Spielberg every two
weeks to cheer him up with various jokes,[3] because there was very little humor on set. Spielberg
also ordered various episodes of Seinfeld on VHS to watch in his hotel room after shooting each
day.[7] Ironically, Jerry's watching of Schindler's List in a theatre became the plot of a later
episode. Spielberg forwent a salary, calling it "blood money", and believed the film would
flop.[3]
Spielberg used German and Polish language in scenes to recreate the feeling of being present in
the past, and used English to emphasize dramatic points. The director was interested in making
the film entirely in German and Polish, but decided "there's too much safety in reading. It would
have been an excuse to take their eyes off the screen and watch something else."[7]
[edit] Cinematography
Spielberg decided not to plan the film with storyboards, and to shoot the film like a documentary,
looking to the documentaries The Twisted Cross (1956)[12] and Shoah (1985) for inspiration.
Forty percent of the film was shot with handheld cameras,[13] and the modest budget of $25
million meant the film was shot quickly over seventy-two days. Spielberg felt that this gave the
film "a spontaneity, an edge, and it also serves the subject." Spielberg said that he "got rid of the
crane, got rid of the Steadicam, got rid of the zoom lenses, [and] got rid of everything that for me
might be considered a safety net."[9] Such a style made Spielberg feel like an artist, as he limited
his tools for a film he felt didn't have to be commercially successful.[6] This matured Spielberg,
who felt that in the past he had always been paying tribute to directors such as Cecil B. DeMille
or David Lean.[11] On this film, his shooting style was purely his own. He proudly noted that in
this film, there were no crane shots.[4]
The decision to shoot the film mainly in black and white lent to the documentary-style of
cinematography, which cinematographer Janusz Kamiński compared to German Expressionism
and Italian neorealism.[9] Kamiński said that he wanted to give a timeless sense to the film, so the
audience would "not have a sense of when it was made."[9] Spielberg was following suit with
"[v]irtually everything I've seen on the Holocaust... which have largely been stark, black and
white images."[14] Universal chairman Tom Pollock asked Spielberg to shoot the film in a color
negative, to allow color VHS copies of the film to be sold, but Spielberg did not want "to
beautify events."[9] Black and white did present challenges to the color-familiar crew. Allan
Starski, the production designer, had to make the sets darker or lighter than the people in the
scenes, so they would not blend. The costumes had to be distinguished from skin tones or colors
being used for the sets.[14]
[edit] Music
See also: Schindler's List (soundtrack)
John Williams composed the score for Schindler's List. The composer was amazed by the film,
and felt it would be too challenging. He said to Spielberg, "You need a better composer than I
am for this film." Spielberg replied, "I know. But they're all dead!"[15] Williams played the main
theme on piano, and following Spielberg's suggestion, he hired Itzhak Perlman to perform it on
the violin. In an interview with Perlman on Schindler's List, he said,
"...I couldn't believe how authentic he [John Williams] got everything to sound, and I said, 'John,
where did it come from?', and he said, 'Well', he said, 'I had some practice with Fiddler on the
Roof and so on, and everything just came very naturally.' and that's the way it sounds."
Interviewer: "When you were first approached to play for Schindler's List, did you give it a
second thought, did you agree at once, or did you say 'I'm not sure I want to play for movie
music.'?
Perlman: "No, that never occurred to me, because in that particular case the subject of the movie
was so important to me, and I felt that I could contribute simply by just knowing the history, and
feeling the history, and indirectly actually being a victim of that history."[16] In the scene where
the ghetto is being liquidated by the Nazis, the folk song Oyfn Pripetshik (or Afn Pripetshek)
(Yiddish: ‫ ")קיוטע רו ןֿפיוא‬is sung by a children's choir. The song was often sung by Spielberg's
grandmother, Becky, to her grandchildren.[17] The clarinet solos heard in the film were recorded
by Klezmer virtuoso Giora Feidman. Williams won an Academy Award for Best Original Score
for Schindler's List, his fifth win.
[edit] Symbols
[edit] The girl in the red coat
Schindler sees a little girl wearing a red coat. The red coat is one of the few instances of color in
the black-and-white scenes of the film.
Although the film is primarily shot in black-and-white, red is used to distinguish a little girl in a
coat. Later in the film, the girl is seen among the dead, recognizable only by the red coat she is
still wearing. Although it was unintentional, this character is coincidentally very similar to Roma
Ligocka, who was known in the Kraków Ghetto for her red coat. Ligocka, unlike her fictional
counterpart, survived the Holocaust. After the film was released, she wrote and published her
own story, The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir (2002, in translation).[18] The scene, however,
was constructed on the memories of Zelig Burkhut, survivor of Plaszow (and other work camps).
When interviewed by Spielberg before the film was made, Burkhut told of a young girl wearing
a pink coat, no older than four, who was shot by a Nazi officer right before his eyes. When being
interviewed by The Courier-Mail, he said "it is something that stays with you forever."
According to Andy Patrizio of IGN, the girl in the red coat is used to indicate that Schindler has
changed: "Spielberg put a twist on her [Ligocka's] story, turning her into one more pile on the
cart of corpses to be incinerated. The look on Schindler's face is unmistakable. Minutes earlier,
he saw the ash and soot of burning corpses piling up on his car as just an annoyance."[19] Andre
Caron wondered whether it was done "to symbolize innocence, hope or the red blood of the
Jewish people being sacrificed in the horror of the Holocaust?"[20] Spielberg himself has
explained that he only followed the novel, and his interpretation was that
"America and Russia and England all knew about the Holocaust when it was happening,
and yet we did nothing about it. We didn't assign any of our forces to stopping the march
toward death, the inexorable march toward death. It was a large bloodstain, primary red
color on everyone's radar, but no one did anything about it. And that's why I wanted to
bring the color red in."[21]
This partial climax in the film may have been influenced by the final scene of Tarkovsky's
Andrei Rublev, an entire black-and-white film which shows a few moments of color at the
end to put an exclamation point on Rublev's spiritual change. This is a far more likely
influence on Spielberg than the suggested Lars von Trier's film, Europa, was in relation to
this approach.[neutrality is disputed]
Although she has no speaking part, the little girl is noted on the Internet Movie Database as
the "Red Genia". Her portrayer, Oliwia Dabrowska, was born in Krakow on 28 May 1989
and later appeared in only one other movie.
[edit] Candles
The beginning features a family observing the Shabbat. Spielberg said, "to start the film with
the candles being lit...would be a rich bookend, to start the film with a normal Shabbat
service before the juggernaut against the Jews begins." When the color fades out in the film's
opening moments, it gives way to a movie in which smoke comes to symbolize bodies being
burnt at Auschwitz. Only at the end do the images of candle fire regain their warmth when
Schindler allows his workers to hold Shabbat services. For Spielberg, they represented "just
a glint of color, and a glimmer of hope."[4]
[edit] Release
The film opened in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto on December 15, 1993. The film
grossed $96.1 million in the United States and over $321.2 million worldwide.[22] In
Germany, over 5.8 million admission tickets were sold.
The film was released to DVD on March 9, 2004. The DVD was available in widescreen and
fullscreen editions, both being a DVD-18 disc with the feature film beginning on side A and
continuing on side B, along with the special features, which include a documentary
introduced by Steven Spielberg. Also released for both formats was a limited edition gift set.
The laserdisc gift set was a limited one, with only 10,000 copies manufactured. Besides the
DVD, the set included the film's soundtrack, the original novel, and an exclusive photo
booklet.[23] Similar to the Laserdisc set, the DVD gift set included the widescreen version of
the film, the original novel, the film's soundtrack on CD, a senitype, and a photo booklet
titled Schindler's List: Images of the Steven Spielberg Film, all housed in a plexiglass
case.[24] The set has since been discontinued.[25]
The film will be released on Blu-Ray in 2012 as part of Universal's 100th Anniversary
celebration. No specific date has been announced as of yet.[26]
[edit] Reception
Schindler's List won seven Oscars at the 66th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and
Best Director. Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were nominated for Best Actor and Best
Supporting Actor respectively, but did not win.[27] At the British Academy awards, the film
won Best Film, the David Lean Award for Direction, Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes),
Cinematography, Editing and Score.[22] Schindler's List won Golden Globes for Best Motion
Picture (Drama), Best Director and Best Screenplay, with John Williams awarded the
Grammy for the film's musical score.[22]
Schindler's List was warmly received by many of Spielberg's peers. Filmmaker Billy Wilder
reportedly wrote a long letter of appreciation to Spielberg in which he proclaimed, "They
couldn't have gotten a better man. This movie is absolutely perfection."[28] Filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino has commented that Schindler's List left him "shaken" and that "even
though I have seen many films about the Holocaust, none up to that point had managed to get
at the feeling of what it was like to be in the inside of a concentration camp."[29] Roman
Polanski, who had turned down Spielberg's offer to direct the film, later commented, "I
certainly wouldn't have done as good a job as Spielberg because I couldn't have been as
objective as he was." Polanski has also cited Schindler's List as an influence on his 1995 film
Death and the Maiden.[30]
Schindler's List received widespread acclaim from critics. Reviewing Schindler’s List for
The New York Review of Books, the leading British critic John Gross wrote: “Suppose the
Disney organization announced that it was planning a film about the Holocaust. Spielberg’s
films up until now have mostly been fairy tales or adventure stories, or a mixture of both, so
I can’t pretend, then, that I approached the film without apprehension. My fears were
altogether misplaced. Spielberg shows a firm moral and emotional grasp of his material. The
film is an outstanding achievement.”[31]
However, the film was immediately attacked by documentary filmmaker Claude Lanzmann,
director of the 9-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah, who claimed that Spielberg had only
succeeded in making "a kitschy melodrama." Lanzmann, who believed his own film to be the
definite account of the Holocaust, complained, "I sincerely thought that there was a time
before Shoah, and a time after Shoah, and that after Shoah certain things could no longer be
done. Spielberg did them anyway."[32] Spielberg angrily responded to Lanzmann's criticisms,
accusing him of wanting to be "the only voice in the definite account of the Holocaust." He
added, "It amazed me that there could be any hurt feelings in an effort to reflect the truth."[33]
The success of Schindler's List persuaded filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to abandon his own
Holocaust project, Aryan Papers, which would have been about a Jewish boy who survives
the war, along with his aunt, by sneaking through Poland while pretending to be a
Catholic.[34] Convinced that no Holocaust film could truly capture the horrors of the real
event, Kubrick is alleged to have spoken of Schindler's List, "Think that's about the
Holocaust? That was about success, wasn't it? The Holocaust is about 6 million people who
get killed. Schindler's List is about 600 who don't."[34] Since then, many of the film's
detractors—including filmmaker Terry Gilliam—have cited this quote in their efforts to
condemn the film.[35]
The film's detractors also include film critic Robert Philip Kolker, who, in his A Cinema of
Loneliness, attacked the portrayal of Goeth as "too unrelievedly brutal. He is a psychopath,
and psychopathology is too easy a way to dismiss Nazism and its adherents. [...] Ideological
elements are so distorted by dreams of power, authority, and manufactured hatred and
convictions of necessity, that the majority of a culture gets caught up in the act of killing the
demonized other. There were psychotic Germans, to be sure; but Nazism cannot be reduced
simply to psychosis. There are scenes in Schindler's List of German officers in a hysterical
frenzy of killing that are, perhaps, more accurate than Goeth's unrelenting murderousness,
but also bring with them the old Hollywood representations of Nazis as sophisticated
gangsters."[36]
Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertész, a Holocaust survivor, criticized Spielberg for
falsifying the experience of the Holocaust in Schindler's List and for showing it as something
that is foreign to the human nature and impossible to recur. He also dismissed the film itself,
saying "it is obvious that the American Spielberg, who incidentally wasn’t even born until
after the war, has and can have no idea of the authentic reality of a Nazi concentration
camp... I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of
understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed
mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of "civilization" as such) and the
very possibility of the Holocaust."[37]
In 2004, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for
preservation in the National Film Registry.[38]
Schindler's List featured on a number of other "best of" lists, including the Time magazine's
Top Hundred as selected by critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel, Time Out
magazine's 100 Greatest Films Centenary Poll conducted in 1995, Roger Ebert's "Great
Movies"' series, and Leonard Maltin's "100 Must See Movies of the Century". In addition,
The Vatican named Schindler's List among the top 45 films ever made.[39]
The readers of the German film magazine, Cinema, voted Schindler's List #1 the best movie
of all time in 2000.[40] In 2002, a Channel 4 poll named Schindler's List the ninth greatest
film of all time,[41] and it came fourth in the 2005 war films poll.[42]
The film was extremely well received in Israel, where it is aired on public television every
year on Holocaust Memorial Day, unedited, uncensored and without commercial breaks.
Following the success of the film, Spielberg founded 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, to save their stories. He
continues to finance that work.[22] Spielberg used the money from the film to finance several
related documentaries, including The Lost Children of Berlin (1996), Anne Frank
Remembered (1995), and The Last Days (1998).[22]
[edit] Awards
[edit] Academy Award
Award[43]
Awarded:
Person
Steven Spielberg
Best Picture
Gerald R. Molen
Branko Lustig
Best Director
Steven Spielberg
Best Adapted Screenplay Steven Zaillian
Best Cinematography
Janusz Kamiński
Ewa Braun
Best Art Direction
Allan Starski
Best Film Editing
Michael Kahn
Best Original Score
John Williams
Nominated:
Best Actor
Liam Neeson
Best Supporting Actor Ralph Fiennes
Best Costume Design
Anna Biedrzycka Sheppard
Andy Nelson
Steve Pederson
Best Sound
Scott Millan
Ron Judkins
Christina Smith
Best Makeup
Matthew Mungle
Judy Alexander Cory
[edit] Golden Globe Award
[edit] Won



Best Motion Picture – Drama
Best Director
Best Screenplay
[edit] Nominated



Best Original Score
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
[edit] American Film Institute recognition






1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies—#9[44]
2003 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains:
o Oskar Schindler—#13 Hero
o Amon Göth—#15 Villain
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
o "The list is an absolute good. The list is life." - Nominated[45]
2006 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers—#3
2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)—#8
2008 AFI's 10 Top 10—#3 Epic film
[edit] Controversies
Commemorative plaque
According to Slovak filmmaker Juraj Herz, the scene in which a group of women confuse an
actual shower with a gas chamber is taken directly, shot by shot, from his Zastihla mě noc
(1986). Herz says he wanted to sue, but was unable to come up with the money to fund the
effort.[46]
For the 1997 American television showing of the film, at Spielberg's insistence it aired
unedited and nearly uncensored, although the sex scene was mildly edited by removing
nearly all of the "thrusting". The film was preceded by a recorded introduction by Spielberg
himself, explaining why the film was being aired nearly unedited. 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.[citation needed] Senator Tom Coburn, then an
Oklahoma congressman, said that in airing the film, NBC had brought television "to an alltime low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity", adding that airing the film was an
insult to "decent-minded individuals everywhere".[47] Under fire from fellow Republicans as
well as from Democrats, Coburn apologized for his criticism, saying: "My intentions were
good, but I've obviously made an error in judgment in how I've gone about saying what I
wanted to say". He said he hadn't reversed his opinion on airing the film, but said it ought to
have been aired later at night when there aren't "large numbers of children watching without
parental supervision".[48] The film was subsequently rebroadcast a year later on select PBS
stations, once again airing unedited and without Spielberg's prologue.
Controversy arose in Germany for the film's television premiere on Pro 7. Heavy protests
ensued after the station intended to televise the film separated by two commercial breaks. As
a compromise, the broadcast finally included one break, consisting of a short news update
and selected commercials (no alcohol and no hygiene products).[why?][49] Since then,
subsequent broadcasts in German television did not include commercial breaks.
In the Philippines chief censor Henrietta Mendez ordered three cuts of Schindler's List, due
to its scenes that displayed female nudity and sexual intercourse, before it could be shown.
As a result of these proposed cuts Steven Spielberg pulled the film from screening in the
Philippines. As a result of Mendez's actions, Philippine senators demanded the abolition of
the Philippine censors board. Senate justice committee chairman Raul Roco stated "such
narrow-mindedness precisely shows the dangers of censorship." Mendez argued that "the sex
act is sacred and beautiful and should be done in the privacy of the bedroom."[50]
The song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" ("Jerusalem of Gold") is featured in the film's
soundtrack and plays during a key moment near the end of the film. This caused some
controversy in Israel when the film was released because the song was written in 1967 and is
widely known in Israel as a pop–folk song. The song was therefore edited out of the Israeli
release of the film and replaced by the song Eli, Eli, which was written by the Jewish
Hungarian poet Hannah Szenes in World War II and is more appropriate for the time period
and subject matter of the film. No comment stemmed from Spielberg in regards to this Israeli
censorship.
Veteran documentary filmmaker and professor Claude Lanzmann also labeled Schindler's
List "pernicious in its impact and influence" and "very sentimental".[citation needed]
French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard stated that he holds Spielberg partly
responsible for the lack of artistic merit in mainstream cinema and accused Spielberg of
using his film Schindler's List to make a profit of tragedy while Schindler's wife lived in
poverty in Argentina. This claim is certainly unwarranted given that Spielberg took no profit
from the film as he considered it "blood money"[citation needed].