Goldhagen & Spielberg's Zwolfkinder

[Roy Gordon]

Well, I thought Schindler's List was a great film, and that it was amazing as a 
product of the American commercial cinema.

What are the other readily available, mass audience films on the holocaust?  
What are the commercial films produced in other countries for mass audiences on 
it?  The Sorrow and the Pity? The Garden of the Finzi-Continis?  The Shop on 
Main Street?  (Well, you can see when I was up on things, to whatever extent.)

Those who saw Night and Fog in college or high school are fortunate, if that is 
the word.  It is a totally brilliant and affecting film.  I didn't see it until 
teaching in a former lifetime as an academic.  I then would show it to all my 
classes.  (Most of which had nothing to do with film, whatsover.)  This was in 
the mid 70s.  Although I have run into people who have seen it, I know that 
almost none of my students had.  Perhaps things have changed in this respect in 
the last 20 years, but somehow I doubt it.  It seems to me that general 
awareness of the Nazis has slid, not increased.

As an aside, Night and Fog's aesthetic problem and great achievement is how to 
present the horror without letting the audience distance itself, 
psychologically or physically, i.e., walking out.  This is the same problem 
faced by SL on a much larger scale, given the intended mass audience.  (Night 
and Fog solves it brilliantly, imo, by, among other techniques, how Resnais 
alternates past and present.)

> Take Ralph Fiennes's incredible
> portrayal of the SS officer in charge of the Auschwitz death camp. The
> impression given by the film is that the sadism of one bad German
> (Fiennes's) is balanced and compensated for by the altruism of a good
> German (Liam Neeson's Schindler).

All I can say is: this wasn't my interpretation at all.  In fact, I'm pretty 
astounded by your interpretation.
 
> But Goldhagen's facts haven't been assailed, rather
> his controversial conclusion that the seeds of the Holocaust were deeply
> embedded in the German culture,in its myths, music, films, economics and
> philosophy. Even if you don't accept this thesis, the book is worth it for
> its detailed history of the little known but horrifically villainous
> Einsatzgruppen and the sadistic and eliminationist death marches (mainly
> involving women and children) at the close of the war.

Spielberg undoubtedly should have beaten Goldhagen to it and tacked it on.

> In an interview in LOOT a few years ago, Christopher Simpson
> suggested there is documentary evidence of this and that the man was merely
> trying to save his own ass as he forsaw how the war was going to end.

Is this in the book (I don't know.)  Is it publicly available, other than 
someone 'suggesting' it?

As for the identification of Spielberg and Reifenstahl:  I've only seen Triumph 
of the Will and Olympia.  I think Triumph of the Will is visually bombastic (to 
use someone else's word) and Olympiad amazing and excellent.  But these are 
both entirely stylistically different than Spielberg.

> Actually, I think the full story (although Kubrick, as always, was well
> ahead of the curve) is hardly known at all--since most of the damning
> evidence was destroyed by the Nazi's or remains sealed by the US State
> Department. Some facts continue to emerge. For instance, there is the
> strange case of George Bush's grandfather, the investment banker Herbert
> Walker, among whose clients during the war were GAF and its parent
> company...drumroll...IG Farben. George's father,
> Prescott Bush continued this tradition at the Nazi-linked firm Dillon,
> Read. Somehow it doesn't surprise me that George Bush thought Schindler's
> List was
> "one of the best films I've ever seen."

Very little would surprise me about George Bush, but I'm really surprised at 
this argument.

					-- roy

Re Night and Fog: "In a control tower a French gendarme was clearly visible.  
This visual evidence of collaboration was intolerable to the authorities.  
After two months of negotiations, the producers of the film agreed to alter the 
image (and the evidence of history) by covering the gendarme's uniform." (from 
_Alain Resnais_ by James Monaco (1978, p 22.)

I mean, how could they???  Distory history?  In a documentary?  Intentionally? 
 Just knuckle under?  So they could satify their egos and get it distributed?  
Wow, I'm sorry I ever saw the film.