2008-2009 has seen the return of the Holocaust in Hollywood with several movies either dealing with the subject directly or tangentially. The Holocaust has always been sporadic material for Hollywood. Every few years a small budget independent or documentary will show up, but mainstream Hollywood rarely invests in a Holocaust masterpiece. If a big budget film about the Holocaust manages to become a reality, the result is generally an accurate account of genocide delivered in epic dimensions. The Holocaust is such a sacred, emotional and controversial subject that it would be Hollywood suicide to make a historically inaccurate or irresponsible film. A film that varies from the basic facts of actual events risks being considered revisionist which would be a disaster for a mainstream film as well as the people behind it.
Hollywood is acutely aware that a Holocaust film, to be accepted on any level, must always stay faithful to basic accepted concepts and historical outlines regarding a specific event or specific issue within that event. It is acceptable to create fictional people and places and subplots around a particular event but to alter a Holocaust event even slightly is very risky and frankly taboo. The Holocaust is such a sacred and risky subject for film makers that while many Holocaust films are done very few are released in wide distribution or considered mainstream. Most are, in fact, documentaries. A formidable documentary on the subject is Imaginary Witness:Hollywood and the Holocaust. It had very limited release and is unfortunately very difficult to locate. If you want to see it you are going to have to get lucky on Ebay.
There is no denying that sentiments and views of the Holocaust have changed over the years since the end of World War II. Hollywood has changed right along with those sentiments and views and changed the types of movies and the way events are depicted. A review of the Internet Movie Database reveals that from 1945-2008 reveals that there were over 400 theatrical productions and documentaries made which addressed the Holocaust in one form or another. Of those, the majority were foreign-made documentaries. One explanation for this is that Europe as a whole was much more willing to face and deal with the horror of what happened than the United States as a whole. This would make sense just in terms of the sheer numbers of Holocaust survivors in Europe and Israel as compared to the United States starting from the end of the war. The vast majority lived, and still live, in places other than the United States. The numbers would obviously balance out over time to some degree based on shifting demographics and the extremely high mortality rates of aging survivors.
If you look at the types of movies that were made, there is no escaping that up through the 1980′s the Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust was very shallow and dismissive not counting documentaries. Here is my list of Hollywood movies and television media that I feel offer the most to the viewer in the portrayal of events and figures of the Holocaust. I include foreign films if they had mainstream United States release. I am only including films whose main focus was the Holocaust as compared to the holocaust being just one historical event in the movie. An example would be Band Of Brothers. This mini-series addresses the Holocaust but is not about the Holocaust. Another recent two films I left off because I did not consider them Holocaust films are Defiance(2008) and Good(2008). I will start with the most recent entries into the Holocaust genre, “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” and “The Reader”.
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Adapted from the book of the same name by John Boyne. A heart ripping movie along the same lines as Life Is Beautiful. This time told from the side of the child of a Concentration Camp Commandant who befriends a Jewish child imprisoned in the camp. The child has been shielded by his father from the horror, brutality and the truth of the purpose of the camp. I consider this one of the best if not the best film of 2008. A must see.
The Reader(2009). Ralph Fiennes harkens back to his brilliant performance as the brutal Plasow Concentration Camp Commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler’s list to once again tackle the Holocaust in a much different light. His character has an affair with his care-taker and Eight years later, while a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is re-united in a shocking way. She is a defendant charged with war crimes.
Paperclips(2004) An extraordinary documentary that I stumbled across surfing cables channels once night. Whitwell Middle
School in rural Tennessee is the last place that you would think would be a hot bed of Holocaust study. It however is the setting for this documentary about a unique experiment in Holocaust understanding. The students at Whitewell collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of Holocaust and share that understanding with Holocaust survivors.
The Diary Of Anne Frank(1959). The 1959 version appears to be Hollywood’s first mainstream attempt to bring the Holocaust to the masses although it did so by sacrificing the depth and emotion of the Holocaust to give the public a Hollywood 
blockbuster movie. The movie itself was a Hollywood hit by the standards of the day. It won three Oscars. An interesting side note is that Audrey Hepburn turned down the role of Anne Frank because she herself lived in occupied Holland and witnessed Nazi atrocities first-hand. To get a feel for early Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust, the Diary of Anne Frank is a must see, but be sure to view the original before viewing the remakes.
Holocaust(1978). A four-part made-for-TV mini-series. That was the first major network big time portrayal of the subject. The series was a monstrous success, drawing a 49 percent market share. So many people watched this mini-series in New York City when first broadcast, that when commercials were on, the local water pressure dropped due to the large number of people using their toilets at once. It won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. It was very instrumental in rocketing the career of Meryl Streep. Michael Moriarty is brilliant as an out of work lawyer who enters the Nazi party and advances through brutality and helping implement “The Final Solution”. Interestingly the series was only as of May 2008 available on DVD in the United States. It had previously only been released in Europe. I am not sure if that was an economic issue, a rights issue, or once again an example of a much more apathetic view of the subject in the United States.
Schindler’s List(1993). The Holocaust comes to Generation X with the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi party member who started out getting rich off the backs of Jewish slave labor and ended up finding his own humanity. He went on to save thousands of Jews from the gas chamber, risking both his personal wealth and his safety to save as many Jews as possible. He spent his entire fortune to bribe Germans and basically “buy” the Jews who worked for him. He kept them for the most part safe until Germany’s surrender. He ended up penniless. Today, there are more than 6000 descendants of “Schindler Jews” living around the world. The movie is done in and black and white and riveting from beginning to end. When I saw this movie, I could hear sobbing all over the theater. Ralph Fiennes is absolutely brilliant as Amon Goeth, the brutal commandant of the Plazow forced labor camp. I view this movie as the first mainstream attempt to bring the true graphic brutality of the Holocaust to our doorsteps. This is the Holocaust movie of our generation. If you asked 100 people under 40 what movie they last saw about the Holocaust, I would be shocked if the majority did not say Schindler’s List. The movie itself was a huge critical and box office success winning seven Oscars
Sophie’s Choice(1982). Sophie’s Choice is a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor with dark secrets in her family’s past. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. She won an academy award for her performance. It should be noted that this film was released 11 years prior to Schindler’s list. It contains one of the most heart wrenching moments in movie history when Sophie recounts the night she arrived at Auschwitz with her children, and of how she was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child and death for the other.
Life Is Beautiful(1997). Life is Beautiful is a Holocaust film told like no other. Instead of focusing on the tragedy, brutality and death of the Holocaust, it is told from the view of a man who uses the gift of humor to protect his only son from the inhumanity while in a concentration camp. The film is incredible in that it allows you to smile and laugh with Guido right up until the tragic end and not feel sad. It sends the strong message that our ability to laugh and make others laugh is ours alone, no matter what forces pull at us. This movie won three Academy Awards. While classified as a Holocaust film, this film is also a joyous celebration of the human spirit. I almost did not see this film, but I have now seen it a total of four times.
The Pianist(2002). This movie is told from the viewpoint of a very talented piano player hiding out in the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the Warsaw Ghetto Liquidation and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Adrian Brody does a brooding, self-absorbed pianist. When the German occupation begins, he simply wonders when he will be able to return to his music. When the killing begins, he is forced to hide and change his priorities to simply trying to survive. Even though he can no longer play, music is the hope and salvation that keeps him alive.
The Grey Zone(2001). The Grey Zone is gritty, dark and sometimes hard to follow. It is, however, a must-see for all those who want an understanding of the Holocaust beyond the basics. The Grey Zone deals with an issue that is very sensitive to Holocaust survivors–Jews sending other Jews to the gas chamber. These Jews were called “Sonderkommandos”. Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing, which was reserved for the guards. While their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses, they often took a much more active role in getting the inmates ready to enter the gas chambers. These inmates were kept in close groups and had much better living conditions than the average inmate, but they were also killed off at regular intervals to prevent any word of the inner workings of the Nazi death apparatus from leaking to the outside world. This movie is about one of several Sonderkommado revolts that took place. The movie features an outstanding peformance by Harvey Keitel.
Playing for Time. Playing for Time is a made-for-T.V piece that is worth seeing. Another movie that gives a perspective on the inner workings of Nazi Concentration Camps in which some inmates were forced to play music for the others as they marched to the gas chambers or life-death selection process. The purpose was to keep them calm and reduce the chances of revolt. You can read an excellent article on the subject here.
Europa Europa(1991). A young Jewish boy poses as a German “aryan” orphan and joins the Hilter Youth in the early days of World War II. An interesting look at the racial, moral and religious identity struggles faced by Jews as they did what they could to prevent their extermination in Nazi Germany. Based on a true story.
Music Box(1989). This is one of the few movies dealing with the issues of aging former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who committed war crimes living in the United States. Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stah give great performances. The movie is based on the true story of John Demjanjuk. While the premise of a daughter representing her father on trial with such high stakes is a stretch, it works well here. Jessica’s emotional opening statement is also unrealistic and inadmissible. The movie is incredibly moving on all levels. You are torn between her father as a loving grandfather and a brutal murderer guilty of terrible war crimes. In an interesting twist of life imitating art, the father of Joe Eszterhas who wrote the screenplay, was accused of writing anti-Semitic propaganda before and during World War II. Like the character in Music Box, his father denied being the person who wrote these materials. Mr. Ezterhas denies knowing anything about his father’s past at the time he wrote the screenplay. There is a great article about this that can be read here.
That is my list of Holocaust films that I feel are must sees for anyone wanting to get a good understanding of the subject through Hollywood. Is this a definitive list? Absolutely not. There are numerous foreign films and documentaries dealing with general and specific issues surrounding the Holocaust. There are also some Hollywood selections I left out such as Uprising. Uprising specifically addresses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. While it is an entertaining mini-series, I felt it the portrayal was a step backwards in that it was too much in the line of the 1978 mini-series Holocaust. It could have been done much more effectively. I feel the above selections are a good starting point for all.
Please feel free to comment and add you own movies to the list with an explanation of why you feel it is an important film or simply why you enjoyed it.
