Spielberg and the 6 Million

[David Casseres]

[davemarc sez]
>FYI, Alain Resnais made "Night and Fog"--among other films.  As has been
>pointed out, a French gendarme was erased from the film to protect the
>delicate sensibilities of French viewers.  So even the great "Night and
>Fog"--a documentary, not a fictional work like SL--can be said to be
>seriously compromised--and perhaps worthy in every other respect.

Whoops, a brain-fart, as I began to realize a minute or so after posting. 
 Sorry about that.

The erasure of the collaborating French gendarme does indeed indicate 
serious compromise on Resnais' part.  In partial mitigation it may be 
pointed out that postwar France has never been a free society, especially 
when it comes to telling the truth about official French complicity in 
Nazi crimes.  I have no doubt that if Resnais hadn't erased the gendarme, 
it would have been impossible to show the film in France at all.

So the truth about French complicity was not told, but the truth about 
the depth of horror in the death camps most certainly was.  I feel this 
is vastly more important than Schindler's story, whether in Kennealy's 
novel (which I read and liked) or in Spielberg's film -- which, as I've 
said, I feel no need to see since I know more about both the Nazi 
holocaust *and* the Schindler story than the movie offers, by all 
accounts.

My feeling about the Schindler story is that it's a drama of one 
complicated German and his interaction with tyranny.  It is played 
against the backdrop of the Nazi holocaust, which was the particular 
tyranny Schindler lived with.  I don't think we should confuse the one 
story with the other, and if (as alleged) Spielberg's film does that, 
then it does history a disservice.

Cheers,
David