Holocaust Film; Film and the Holocaust
Robert S. Leventhal
University of Virginia
Lena Olin as Masha in Paul Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story
Introduction:
In this section of Responses to the Holocaust,
it is necessary to deal with what is technically Holocaust Film, film
whose subject matter is implicitly or explicitly the Nazi Genocide of the
European Jews 1933-1945, and the larger issue of Film and the Holocaust, in
which larger critical and theoretical issues concerning the way in which
the Holocaust figures in film as well as the medium of film itself as a vehicle
for the representation of the Holocaust are addressed. The former -- Holocaust
Film -- would include information and critical analyses of films such as
Alain Resnais' Night and Fog, Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow
and the Pity, The Partisans of Vilna, Claude
Lanzmann's Shoah, Alan Adelson's Lodz Ghetto, as well as
non-documentary films that have the Holocaust as their immediate, or even less direct theme and focus,
such as Agnieska Holland's Europa, Europa, Paul
Mazursky's Enemies, A Love Story,
Zentropa, Spielberg's Schindler's List and even
films such as Sophie's Choice and La Jetee. Because of its
unmistakable analysis of the belated and incomplete mourning process of Postwar
Germany, Hans Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler, Ein
Film aus Deutschland, it is also considered as a Holocaust film, especially
the section The End of a Winter's Tale.
Other issues concerning the cinematic representation of the Holocaust, its effects
or consequences, and the theoretical and critical issues that emerge in the
consideration of these issues, pose yet another question for the student of the
Holocaust. In these sections, significant reponses by critics and scholars are
given equal space. For instance, Susan Sontag's famous review article on Syberberg's film
Syberberg's Hitler is considered a highly
learned, articulate piece of criticism along with other, more traditional
scholarly treatments of the film such as can be found in Eric Santner's
Stranded Objects.
The Women are deported to Auschwitz in Spielberg's Schindler's List
A Miracle at Auschwitz in Spielberg's Schindler's List
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