Why did Steven Spielberg refuse to pay himself for this film?

This Monday, January 20, 2024, at 9:05 p.m., the France 3 channel broadcasts Schindler's Lista film that marked the career of Steven Spielberg. Tele-Leisure explains to you why the director chose to refuse his salary for this cult feature film.

This classic is a must-have in Steven Spielberg's filmography. It also won an impressive number of awards in 1994, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture, three Golden Globes and six BAFTA Awards. Despite the great success of Schindler's Listits director refused to receive remuneration. On the occasion of the broadcast of the film on the France 3 channel, this Monday January 20, 2024, at 9:05 p.m., Tele-Leisure explains to you the reasons given by Steven Spielberg to justify this unusual choice.

Why did Steven Spielberg choose not to receive a salary for Schindler's List ?

After Indiana Jones or Jurassic Parkthe filmmaker launches into a very different register by directing Schindler's List. The director chooses to recreate a Holocaust labor camp in Poland to tell the incredible, but true, story of Oskar Schindler. When the film was released in December 1993, Steven Spielberg declared: “If it is impossible to tell the story of the Holocaust, it would have been a sin not to try”. His remarks are reported in an article in Figaro published on March 14, 2019. To make this film, the filming budget amounted to $23 million. A sum justified in particular by the 30,000 extras mobilized as well as the 18,000 costumes prepared. But the cost of production is nothing compared to the film's revenue. Screened worldwide, the film grossed $321 million at the box office. A nice profit which however did not benefit Steven Spielberg. During an interview published in Today on March 17, 2004, the director explained that, according to him, the money brought in by the film was “blood money”. And it is for this reason that he categorically refused to receive his salary for Schindler's List.

What is the controversy around Schindler's List?

Even though it was praised by the press and the public and became cult, Schindler's List also sparked controversy at the time of its release. In an article from Monde published on March 3, 1994, the filmmaker and journalist Claude Lanzmann criticizes that this film is not a documentary, but also the angle chosen by Steven Spielberg to talk about the Shoah. He explains: “How can he say what the Holocaust was by telling the story of a German who saved 1,300 Jews, since the overwhelming majority of Jews were not saved?”. To this he adds: “No, it didn't happen like that for everyone. At Treblinka, or at Auschwitz, the question of rescue didn't even arise.” A controversy which does not prevent Schindler's List to be a huge success with the public. In France alone, the cinema screening brought together 2.6 million spectators.