Schindler’s List (1993)

Official trailer

Schindler’s List is Steven Spielberg’s 1993 American biographical drama adapting Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel.

The film depicts German industrialist Oskar Schindler who employed approximately twelve hundred Polish Jews in his Krakow enamelware factory during the German occupation of Poland, protecting them from extermination at Auschwitz through transferring his operations to munitions production at his hometown of Brunnlitz. It traces Schindler’s transformation from war profiteer interested in Jewish slave labor as economic opportunity into figure committed to protecting his workers despite increasing personal cost. Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler.

Ben Kingsley plays his accountant Itzhak Stern. Ralph Fiennes plays SS commandant Amon Goeth. Caroline Goodall plays Schindler’s wife Emilie. Embeth Davidtz plays Goeth’s maid Helen Hirsch. Steven Zaillian wrote the screenplay. Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures produced the film on a budget of approximately 22 million dollars, and it grossed approximately 322 million dollars worldwide. The work won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.

I think this is the finest thing Spielberg ever made, and I don’t expect anyone to top it on this subject. It’s hard to watch, and I wouldn’t cut a minute. What moves me most is that it never lets Schindler off the hook. He starts as a profiteer, and the film makes me watch the change happen slowly enough to believe it.

Steven Spielberg reached his principal serious dramatic achievement with Schindler’s List after his earlier commercial filmmaking had established his standing as American cinema’s most successful commercial director. The project required deep personal commitment beyond conventional production. Spielberg refused payment for the film, used its profits to start the Righteous Persons Foundation, shot extensively in Krakow on a Plaszow camp replica built near the original site, and filmed outside Auschwitz. The black and white photography preserves the documentary feel that conventional color production would have compromised.

Liam Neeson’s performance as Oskar Schindler combines commercial Hollywood leading-man capability with the moral seriousness the material required. Ralph Fiennes’s performance as Amon Goeth has aged into reference standard for cinematic depiction of bureaucratic evil. The film remains a landmark among American Holocaust productions across multiple decades.

Spielberg’s Approach

Spielberg directed Schindler’s List with deliberate departure from his commercial cinematic approach.

The black and white photography, the handheld camera work, the long takes, and the documentary-influenced staging all distinguish the production from his earlier commercial filmmaking. He filmed in Krakow and close to the real camp sites instead of on a studio backlot. The combination of locations, photography, and committed direction produced material that conventional Hollywood production wouldn’t have generated.

The treatment signaled to audiences that Spielberg was operating differently than his earlier commercial productions had worked. This allowed audiences to receive the material as serious historical engagement instead of as commercial entertainment based on serious historical material. The distinction matters for productions engaging Holocaust content. The Spielberg approach has aged into reference standard for committed Holocaust cinema. Later productions have continued to work within or against the standards the film created.

The handheld camera is the choice I admire most. Spielberg, of all directors, gives up the polish that made him famous, and the rough, close camera puts me in the middle of events with nowhere to look away.

Fiennes as Goeth

Ralph Fiennes plays SS commandant Amon Goeth across the Plaszow concentration camp operation.

The performance combines physical presence, vocal authority, and the underlying recognition that Goeth represents specific category of evil that builds through bureaucratic process instead of through personal sadism alone. Goeth enjoys his violence. The film doesn’t allow audiences to dismiss him as simply mad. He lands as functional human being whose moral commitments support the brutality.

Fiennes frightens me more than any screen villain I can think of, and he does it by being ordinary. Goeth enjoys what he does and runs the camp like an office, and that combination is the most honest thing the film says to me about how atrocity works.

Fiennes got a Best Supporting Actor nomination for the role, and it made him a serious dramatic actor. Quiz Show (1994), The English Patient (1996) and the Harry Potter films came after, and Goeth is still the part I think of first when I hear his name. I can’t name another screen portrait of everyday evil that matches it.

The Black and White Photography

Spielberg shot the film almost entirely in black and white photography. The work gave this picture documentary feel that conventional color photography would have compromised. The Krakow, the Plaszow camp, and the eventual Auschwitz scenes all gain weight through monochrome treatment that emphasizes structural composition over color information. The little girl in the red coat is one of the few exceptions where selective color appears within the otherwise black and white production.

The photographic choice has aged into reference standard for committed historical cinema. Later productions have continued to invoke similar approaches. The film acknowledges that surviving Holocaust documentation exists primarily in black and white photography and matches that documentation through its photographic approach. Audiences receive the material as continuous with actual historical record instead of as colorized reconstruction. This technique gives the production weight that conventional period production wouldn’t have generated.

The girl in the red coat is the moment I’d point to if someone asked why the film deserves a 10. A single patch of color in all that gray turns a crowd into one child, and I think it’s the most effective use of color I’ve seen in a black and white film.

Is Schindler’s List as good as people say?

For Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List is his principal serious dramatic achievement. Spielberg’s deliberate departure from commercial approach produced material that conventional Hollywood production wouldn’t have generated. Ralph Fiennes plays SS commandant Amon Goeth across reference-standard depiction of bureaucratic evil that unfolds through functional human nature instead of madness. The black and white photography matches the historical record through technical means instead of imposing contemporary standards onto historical material.

It gets a 10 from me because I can’t find a false note in it. Neeson makes Schindler’s change believable, Fiennes makes evil look like a working day, and Spielberg sets aside every commercial instinct he had to tell the story straight. I don’t hand out 10s for importance alone, and this one earns it scene by scene. Anyone interested in biographical cinema or in how the Holocaust can be put on screen should see it.

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