Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg, is about Oskar Schindler, who made a milestone in German history during the World War II. Spielberg creates tension in the film during the scenes of the Liquidation of the Ghetto, the Little Girl in the Red Coat and the Final Solution in Auschwitz. The techniques that were used to create tension include sounds (such as diegetic and non-diegetic), lighting (the use of shadows), camera shots and angles, symbolism and motifs, and filming in black and white.
During the Liquidation of the Ghetto, a man in the sewers is attempting escape from the soldiers. Tension is created with the savaged barking dogs and gunshots can be heard as diegetic sounds, generating fear for the audience. In the hospital, a doctor is euthanising terminally-ill patients so the soldiers could not unleash their bullets and let the patients die in a horrific way. The bed sheets and the patients are in white contrasting the blood symbolising death because the blood is the colour black. Low angles are used when the soldiers are going upstairs in the apartment to clear it; tension is created because the low angle shots demonstrate the Germans gaining power and control as the Jewish have lost all of their personal possessions. When a Jewish man tried to save the life of a life young Jewish boy that attempted escape, Spielberg filmed this scene as a handheld shot to generate a sense of panic. After the Jews are cleared of their apartments, women and men are separated to highlight fear and widespread terror for the audience.
Amidst the Little Girl in the Red Coat scene, she makes her first appearance just as The Liquidation of the Ghetto is ending. Schindler is on the hill observing the obscure and sinister violence...
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...hich is regurgitating human ashes. Spielberg has purposely created this because it is foreshadowing death for the Schindlerjüden. The women have been unclothed and had their heads shaved which portrays humiliation and dehumanisation. While the women are ushered into the chamber, violin in minor key is played and demonstrates ominous tones to create apprehension.
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is about the humanitarian of World War II, Oskar Schindler who displayed a significant historic event in Jewish history. Tension is created from certain camera shots designed to make suspense for the audience, symbolism such as the girl in the red coat, the lighting, the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds, and filming in black and white. These techniques are presented during the Liquidation of the Ghetto, the Little Girl in the Red coat and the Final Solution in Auschwitz.
Throughout the film, the filmmaker follows the three victims around in their everyday lives by using somber music and backgrounds of depressing colors. The documentary starts off with colorful images of the scenery
I would like to point out the poignant cinematography, which was very innovative for its time. The narration and the filming introducing what was about to be uncovered must have been extremely moving in a melancholy way. The mise-en-scène is both compelling and haunting, each frame cleverly editied. Resnais experimented with what is known as the long shot, and the 360 degree shot, to make the voyeur very aware of the unbalanced composition. The panning of the film tracking back from Auschwitz brings us a close up, of barbed wire. This clearly suggests that this isn't what it appears to be. Resnais films the past in black and white, and the then present in colour. The ambiance is chilling, and the composed background music unique. Where normally dramatic loud music would be used to express the abonimation and enormity of the most horrendous scenes, Resnais did quite the contrary.
Schindler's list premiered mere months after the inauguration of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, leading to a capitalising success on the American peoples cultural focus on historical voyeurism. The critical reception of Schindler's List is a intellectual discussion on the moral nature of a film through the ability to dramatize what was deemed impossible; critically selectively received with a social conscious, and a division on Spielberg's stylistic representation of the subject matter. The scholarship on Schindler's List only reaches one shared thesis that of its transitional nature in his cinematic career into a more self-styled seriousness with arching the blockbuster with sober artistic work (Grainge, Jancovich, & Monteith, 2012). Critical reception of Spielberg's work comments on the true nature of its testimony in memorial to the Holocaust with appropriate restraint or typical emotional manipulation, combined with arguments of the nature of film is artistic or entertaining. Temporal and spatial variations don't seem to affect the critics review, it appears to be more the view of Spielberg as an auteur and also their comfort in exploring such a sensitive historical memory. Deconstruction of the reception will discuss the stylistic nature of the film with a controversial documented cinematography, alongside Schindler's List's place among other works in regards to the subject of the Holocaust and Spielberg's handling of the digestible.
The Holocaust was the state sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Six million Jews were killed through the process of identification, exclusion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation and extermination. Many who fought against the Nazi’s are seen as heroes which is clearly portrayed in the film “Schindler’s List” through the protagonist Oskar Schindler as he saves the lives of 1100 Jews. Schindler was prepared to make his fortune from World War II. Joining the Nazi party for political convenience, he staffs his factory with Jewish laborers. At the point when the SS starts eradicating Jews in the Krakow ghetto, Schindler organized to have his workers secured
In the second half of the film, it is now March 13th, 1943, and the liquidation of the ghetto is taking place. Many Jews are unjustly killed as they are pulled from their houses or did not co-operate. Those who tried to hide are found and kill...
Reading, Anna. "Young People's Viewing Of Holocaust Films In Different Cultural Contexts." Holocaust And The Moving Image (2005): 210-216. RAMBI. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
When a Jewish girl living in Krakow under fabricated papers visits Schindler, and she asks that he hire her parents to work in his factory. He is furious with the girl and she runs from him, fearing for her life and her liberty. Schindler expresses his rage at Stern, whom he accuses of giving refuge to Jews in the "haven" of a factory. Schindler is not angry at the idea ...
Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots within the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody wins in war.
The sound used in this scene are all diegetic, the sounds of gunfire and explosions show that the characters in this scene are in very real danger of being shot or blown up, this helps the viewer develop a more personal connection with the characters since the scene is towards the end of the film, the viewer has developed a personal connection with the characters and do not want them to die. The diegetic sounds of military personnel can be heard, this is used to show the urgency that the military personnel have to get The Sapphires and Dave out of the dangerous situation. This scene is used to emphasise the danger that Dave and The Sapphires are in very real and very lethal danger, the mixture of sinister camera angles to emphasise the visual danger that the characters are in to the inhospitable sounds portrayed by the scene to highlight the explosive danger that the characters are in. The lighting used features the darkness and the difficulty to see due to the night sky.
Oskar Schindler would never have been anyone’s ideal savior, especially for the Jewish community. He was an open member of the Nazi party, a womanizer, a gambler, an alcoholic, and was extremely money hungry, but was successfully able to rescue and save from death over twelve hundred Jewish men and women. Schindler was born on April 28th, 1908 in Zwittua, Czechoslavakia. He was born Catholic and into a wealthy family, but started early on a life of sin. In 1930 he moved to Poland in hopes of becoming a success in business. As the Holocaust was just in its’ beginnings, he was able to get his hands on an enamel wear factory on Lapowa Street in in Krakow. This was one of the factories that used to owned and ran by a Jewish individual, but was then stripped away from them like all other businesses that were stolen away from the Jewish people during the Holocaust. The location of the factory was only a few miles away from the ghettos. Schindler quickly moved in on the SS officers and tried to make close ties with them in order to gain connections with high authority. He showered them with women, money, alcohol, and other desired objects. From his new acquaintances he obtained free employment from the Jewish “slaves” of the labor camps. In order to keep his factory and the money he was making, Schindler changed his factory to cater to wartime needs. The factory was modified from producing enamel wares to ammuntion, but the ammunition was faulty and did not work. S...
When the more thoughtful and intimate parts of the movie present themselves, a slow paced piano is used to match the solemn moment. Sections of the movie have a positive and optimistic outlook, for example, when Karl walks through the small country town to the house of his new found friend. Karl is obviously filled with awe and enthusiasm for his resurrection into life, this is reflected through the music. An intimate moment in the movie is between Karl and the boy. Karl tells an extremely sad story. A soulful slide guitar and whistling accompanies this story, the music is extremely sad and is the emotion for the kind hearted but seemingly emotionless Karl. Another touching and emotional part of the movie is when Karl visits his father. Whilst Karl walks to the run down house of his elderly father, harmonious voices sing a haunting gospel tune.
Director Mark Herman presents a narrative film that attests to the brutal, thought-provoking Nazi regime, in war-torn Europe. It is obvious that with Herman’s relatively clean representation of this era, he felt it was most important to resonate with the audience in a profound and philosophical manner rather than in a ruthlessness infuriating way. Despite scenes that are more graphic than others, the films objective was not to recap on the awful brutality that took place in camps such as the one in the movie. The audience’s focus was meant to be on the experience and life of a fun-loving German boy named Bruno. Surrounding this eight-year-old boy was conspicuous Nazi influences. Bruno is just an example of a young child among many others oblivious of buildings draped in flags, and Jewis...
Schindler’s List had a great effect on me personally. I thought that Thomas Keneally did an excellent job in making the reader feel the events of the time. Perhaps what I found to be most interesting in Schindler’s List is a question of morality. I began asking myself the question, would I be as heroic as Oskar Schindler if I were in his shoes? I think that this is exactly what Keneally wanted us to do; he wanted us to look at ourselves and analyze what’s inside. Historically, I find Schindler’s List to be very important not only because it is tells of a shameful time in western civilization, but also because the events that took place in the novel occurred only yesterday. After all fifty years is almost nothing in historical terms. Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength is this feeling that the events that transpired in Schindler’s List are in fact modern history.
This documentary like film begins with Oskar Schindler getting ready to make the deal of a life time by getting in good with the Nazi Officers. Schindler was a man that knew how to smooze people. He would wine and dine them with the best of wine, food, and women, which was not a cheap thing to do, especially during World War II. He was fond of saying, "Presentation is everything."
The Holocaust is often considered one of the darkest and most heinous periods in modern history, however there are numerous accounts of heroism and selfless charity to emerge from the ashes. Despite the Nazi regime’s stranglehold on European affairs during a large part of the second world war, their radical and racially charged agenda was not universally accepted amongst German citizens and Nazi officials. The fear of strict punishment at the hands of the SS squashed popular outcry over the atrocities, but it did not stop the heroic acts of a few compassionate and unassuming individuals. One such hero is Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who spearheaded an effort to protect his Jewish factory workers from the uncertain fate of the the Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. When asked about his motives Schindler reported, "I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do" (Schindler). Though Schindler was himself a registered member of the Nazi party he would would ultimately be responsible for saving the lives of some twelve hundred Jews by wars end. However, the original twelve hundred are merely a portion of Schindler’s lasting impact and the real significance is in the “nearly 7,000 living descendants of Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews)” (Sandweiss). Thus, Schindler’s legacy was cemented in his defiance and in his preservation of future generations of Jews around the world.