Alternatives to Schindler's List

Steelhead sitka at teleport.com
Thu Jun 13 00:36:33 CDT 1996


Here's a list of films that have informed my own view of the European Question
during WWII and shortly after:

Marcel Ophuls--Hotel Terminus
Alain Resnais--Night and Fog
Claud Lanzmann--Shoah
Volker Schlondorff--Our Hitler (My favorite, Schlondorff could do Pynchon)
Volker Schlondorff--Tin Drum
Jiri Menzel--Closely Watched Trains (imbued with a cool humanism)
Fassbinder--Marriage of Maria Braun (and five or six others, including his
irritating but unforgetable version of Nabokov's Despair)
Andrezj Wajda--Kanal (must be seen to be believed and even then...)
Lina Wertmuller--Seven Beauties
Heinz Schirk--Wannsee Conference
Costa-Gravas--Music Box (sure it's melodramatic, but its also ironic, and
that Jessica Lange!)
Louis Malle--Au Revoir Les Enfants
Welles--The Stranger (Quirky and cheap, but beautifully shot and somehow right)
W. Herzog--Aguirre: the Wrath of God, which I think is a weird parable of
the Third Reich.
Bergman--The Serpent's Egg (Wretchedly acted, for sure, but still...)
Agniezka Holland--Europa, Europa
Michele Drach--Les Violons du Bal
and a bizarre, hypnotic film that came out a few years ago by a dutch
film-maker, I believe it was title Zentropa?
Fritz Lang--Man Hunt
GW Pabst--The Last Ten Days

One big hole here is the Soviet's. Surely, the great Sergei Bondarchuk made
films about the Nazi occupation. What are they?

Someone should film George Steiner's creepy novel The Portage to San
Cristobal of A. H.

There are many, many more that I am no doubt forgetting. The point is:
there were plenty of great films made before the atrocity of Schindler's
List (though, admittedly, not many by Hollywood). Let's hope there will be
some afterwards.

Steely







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