To celebrate its 30th anniversary, let’s look back at the black and white film with the biggest box office of all time: Schindler’s List. However, nothing made this 3h15 drama, without notable stars (at the time), about the most sinister episode in the history of humanity, the Holocaust, to receive so much enthusiasm from the from the public as well as the critics and to offer its director his first Oscar.
If Spielberg acquired the rights when he releasedE.T.in 1982, he waited until he was mature enough to put Thomas Keneally’s book on film.
He had also told one of the directors of Universal that he would direct it “In ten years, when I am ready”.
Prediction to which he was faithful since the pre-production of Schindler’s List began in 1992, before that of Jurassic Park. Universal, wishing to capitalize on a success before embarking on a project that they imagined (wrongly) to be at a loss, convinced him to shoot Jurassic Park first, claiming that Schindler would change him forever.
Released at 50e anniversary of the liberation of the camps, this feature film is the very first in America to tackle this question head-on without going through docu-fiction.
In the United States, the first television broadcast of the film, on February 23, 1997 (uncensored, a first for a film showing genitals), was watched by a third of American households (65 million), an absolute record for a long non-sporting program.
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The red coat
The first image that comes to mind when we think of Schindler’s Listit is the appearance of the little girl in red in the middle of the Krakow ghetto. From the top of the hill overlooking the city, Schindler watches helplessly at the horrible spectacle from which emerges, like a breath of pure air, this little girl, barely 3 years old, dressed in red in the bosom of this universe in black and white.
Spielberg explains that, for him, it “symbolizes the fact that the Holocaust took place in a world that knew of its existence and yet did nothing to prevent it. No one bombed the German railways on which the convoys to the camps passed. Nobody bombed the crematoriums. She is obvious, designated by her red coat for everyone’s attention, and yet no one seems to notice her, she advances in general indifference. »
His appearance marks the beginning of Schindler’s awareness of the massacre of the Jews.
Faced with the black and white scene, the individuals swarming below seem impossible to identify, like the vermin that they were in the eye of the Nazis, including Schindler, who wears the swastika on the back of his his jacket.
However, this little girl in red appears and she bursts onto the screen, as red as the blood that the Nazis considered impure, permanently changing Schindler’s outlook: the Jews are now no longer a shapeless mass, but individuals.
Simply by a touch of color, like this famous list which gives its title to the film, Spielberg succeeded in making the individual stand out from the mass, in restoring humanity to an entire people, exactly the opposite of desire of the Nazis which was to transform them into animals (a term often used by Primo Levi), herded into camps, ready to be slaughtered.
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The Russian invasion
By deciding to focus only on the survivors in his film, Spielberg will oppose the Nazi system where every Jew is already a walking dead person.
His bias is radical: not to claim to describe the aberration of the figure of 6 million deaths in the Holocaust, but only a miracle in the heart of darkness: the 1100 Jews who, thanks to the will of a single man, managed to escape.
Just one person can make the difference. The actress who plays the little girl in red, Oliwia Dabrowska, understands this well, since she is now at the head of groups of volunteers who help Ukrainian refugees arriving at the Polish border, fleeing the Russian invasion .
Victor Norek, creator of the YouTube channel The CinématoGrapheurspecializes in dissecting mainstream films. He writes for the magazine Rockyrama and is a speaker, among others, for the Cinémathèque québécoise.
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