The Holocaust is seen as a time of horror, filled with brutal, inhuman actions carried out by the Nazi party. The film Schindler’s list is one of the most realistic movies to show the view of the concentration camps, and also shows the view of suffering the Jews in the camps. In World War II, Germany was ruled by Adolf Hitler who wanted to put all the Jews into the camp. This film is built around the character of Schindler who appears in films as an empathetic man. He starts off as by ruling money and gaining power from it.
The picture of innocence, walking among the worst evil in the world. It is after he saw this and the conditions that the Jews were living in that he began to take in more and more Jews that weren’t necessarily making him money, but because he was trying to save them. I believe that half the reason for Shindler’s change of heart is because of his accountant Itzhak Stern. He convinced Shindler that saving even those who weren’t “essential” to his business or to him making a profit was the right thing to do. At the end of the movie, all of his Jewish workers make Shindler a ring as a thank you for everything he has done for them.
Such as the character Schindler, at the begging of the film he is portrayed as an arrogant, selfish and cunning war profiteer. Shown in the first scene of the film where Spielberg uses close up shots or large amount of money as well as the wealthy clothing Schindler wears representing a wealthy upper class man. When Schindler has his first meeting with Stern, Spielberg uses a two shot and positions Schindler on a chair with his feet placed on the table representing Schindler’s relaxed attitude, power and lack of respect towards the Jewish people. Later on throughout the movie Schindler and Stern start to develop a friend ship. Towards the end on the film Schindler changes his perspective of Jewish people and his attitude towards them.
Dealing on the black market, he lived in high style. In 1942 and early 1943, the Germans decimated the ghetto’s population of some 20,000 Jews through shootings and deportations. Several thousand Jews who survived the ghetto’s liquidation were taken to Plaszow, a forced labor camp run by the sadistic SS commandant Amon Leopold Goeth. Moved by the cruelties he witnessed, Schindler contrived to transfer his Jewish workers to barracks at his factory. In late summer 1944, through negotiations and bribes from his war profits, Schindler secured permission from German army and SS officers to move his workers and other endangered Jews to Bruennlitz, near his hometown of Zwittau.
As Schindler went to the labor camps he would be witness to many brutal shootings of the innocent and undeserving Jew’s. As the Holocaust worsened, Schindler heard more horrific stories which he could no longer ignore and quickly wrote up a list, with the help of his financial advisor, an intelligent Jew, Itzak Stern. With the names of hundreds of Jews. Schindler took the list to the commandant of the labor camp and demanded ‘what is one worth to you’, ‘tell me, and just tell me, what one is worth!’ This is the major turning point for the character of Schindler as we see he has realized the true value of money and life. This quote shows how he is willing to pay any amount to save the lives of the Jew’s.
Their sarcastic remarks to the powerless victim are evocative of the sarcasm Alex and his gang used on the victims that they beat and sometimes raped. Whilst Alex is suffering from the movie clips, Doctor Brodsky simply says ‘Excellent, excellent, excellent.’ Here, the Doctor is clearly portraying how he does not wish to show any sympathy towards helpless Alex, as he did do to his previous victims. The detail in which Alex goes into whilst in distress is extremely intense and vivid. Alex says ‘I was sweating a malenky bit with the pain in my guts and a horrible thirst and my gulliver going throb throb throb.’ For me, the repetition of the word ‘and’ explains to the reader just how many feelings of pain and discontent Alex is going through. Words such as ‘sweating’ ‘guts’ and ‘thirst’ are all words that we associate with labour and hard work and that is exactly what Alex seems to be going through.
Being near the actual locations, Spielberg had a hard time working. At times, he felt sick and sent everyone back to the hotels because he did not want to work on the film anymore. “Schindler’s List” tells the story of Oskar Schindler who at the beginning of the film was a war profiteer who basically extorts money from the now disposed Jews in Krakow to set up an ammunition factory using Jewish slave labors. As Schindler comes to understand the full extent of the Holocaust, he used his money and power to save as many Jews as he can. His decision to save the Jews was surprising because Schindler was in the Nazi party.
The film ‘Schindler’s List’ directed by Steven Spielberg is set during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, in 1943. It follows Oskar Schindler, a charming character who manipulates every situation he’s in, to his advantage, as he goes from being a man primarily focused on the welfare of his business, to have grown and changed into a man determined to fight for the welfare of the ‘inferior’ Jews, even at his own expense. Spielberg uses many techniques to make ‘Schindler’s List’ memorable. Such as the use of contrast between diegetic and non diegetic sound, the distinct, preservative use of colour, the internation between significant camera angles and the film noir technique used throughout the film. One key scene in the film was the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto, and using these techniques, Spielberg was successful in effectively making this scene believable and realistic, as well as a memorable event in the film that involved significant symbolism relative to the entire text.
This time is said to be one of the darkest periods in human history as it explores the extent that the Nazi’s went through in order to eliminate any “impure” groups from Germany. Schindler was a profiteering womanizer during the war, but as the film progresses, Schindler begins to show gratitude towards the Jews and make his goal to aid as many as he could. Schindler does this by writing a list and buying as many Jews as he can so they could work in his factories and, in the end, triumphs by saving 1,100 Jews. Triumph of the human spirit plays a prominent role in this film. Jews from “Schindler’s List” presents to us their unbroken spirit and will to survive.
Next is gambling, the temptation that ruins men of power and wealth. Finally, he denounces swearing. He argues that it so offends God that he forbade swearing in the Second Commandment—placing it higher up on the list than homicide. After almost two hundred lines of sermonizing, the Pardoner finally returns to his story of the lecherous Flemish youngsters. As three of these rioters sit drinking, they hear a funeral knell.