Schindler’s List, American historical drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, released in 1993, starring Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley. The screenplay was written by Steven Zaillian and based on Australian writer Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark. Schindler’s List has won numerous awards, including seven Academy Awards, and is considered one of the best films of all time.

Historical background

Schindler’s List is based on the historical novel Schindler’s Ark (1982) by Australian author Keneally, who wrote the book after meeting Leopold Page (also known as Poldek Pfefferberg), a Polish Holocaust survivor who had been saved by real-life profiteer Oskar Schindler, a German Nazi from Czechoslovakia. In 1939 Schindler, who had previously worked in counter intelligence for the German government, moved to Kraków to buy a formerly Jewish-owned enamel factory that had been seized by the Nazi government. He took advantage of a government program that hired out Jewish workers to perform forced labor to lower his costs but eventually became sympathetic to the circumstances of the Polish Jews who had been corralled into ghettos. When the Nazis liquidated the Kraków ghetto and sent most of the city’s Jews to the Plaszow forced labor camp, which later became a concentration camp, Schindler got permission to designate his factory a sub-camp of Plaszow. In 1944 he relocated his factory to Brünnlitz (Brnĕnec) in the Sudetenland along with his Kraków workers, where he was able to preserve their lives until the end of the war.

Some critics have argued that the film’s representation of Schindler is too generous. Schindler was an opportunist who sought to benefit from the Nazi extermination of Jews according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. For example, the factory through which he was able to save Jewish workers had been stolen by the Nazi government from its earlier Jewish owners. Historian David Crowe argues in his 2004 biography of Schindler that Schindler himself had very little to do with the compilation of his eponymous list. For many observers, this complexity makes Schindler a fascinating historical figure. Others argue that Spielberg failed to adequately reckon with Schindler’s personal flaws in his film.

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Production

Long before Keneally and Spielberg heard of Schindler, Pfefferberg had attempted to have a movie made on Schindler’s life. A 1963 deal with MGM had led to a completed script with Sean Connery set to play Schindler, but the project was scrapped when Connery backed out.

Spielberg first learned of Schindler when he read a review of Keneally’s novel in The New York Times. Although he did not immediately commit to directing a film adaptation, Universal Pictures bought the film rights. Spielberg approached several other directors to take on the project, including Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack, and Martin Scorsese. Eventually he determined that he would have to direct the movie himself, despite his fears that he was not mature enough as a filmmaker to do it justice.

Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski sought a documentary-like aesthetic for the film, which was shot in black-and-white on a shooting schedule of 72 days, using handheld cameras about 40 percent of the time. Shooting locations included the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and Schindler’s former factory.

Plot synopsis

The film is a World War II Holocaust drama focused primarily on the actions of Schindler (Liam Neeson), who ultimately saved more than 1,000 of his Jewish employees from the final solution. The film begins in 1939 when Schindler arrives in Kraków, Poland. He begins ingratiating himself with the local Nazi leadership and making connections with local Jewish businesspeople to buy an enamelware factory that had been seized from its Jewish owners. He hires Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a Jewish businessman with connections, who conspires to hire as many Jewish workers as possible to work for Schindler, allowing them to be classified as important for the war effort and thereby saving them from transport to the concentration camps.

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Second Lieut. Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes), a sadistic Nazi, comes to Kraków to manage the construction of the Plaszow concentration camp. During the construction, Schindler enjoys the benefits of membership in the Nazi Party, including wealth, status, and lucrative business opportunities. When the camp construction is finished, Schindler witnesses the liquidation of the ghetto. In an iconic scene that features a little girl in a red coat—the only color in the film—Schindler is visibly moved by the destruction.

Throughout the film, Stern, the fictional amalgamation of a group of men who worked with Schindler during the war, acts as a living conscience to Schindler during his transformation from profiteering Nazi to humanitarian. As the German losses pile up and significant ground is lost to the Allies, Göth is ordered to ship the remaining Jews from Plaszow to Auschwitz. Schindler asks for permission to keep his workers and have them transported to a munitions factory he is building in Brünnlitz. Göth only agrees after an exorbitant bribe from Schindler. This leads Schindler and Stern to create the titular Schindler’s list, which holds the names of the roughly one thousand workers that will be saved from transport to Auschwitz and rerouted to Brünnlitz. Schindler spends the remainder of the war and all of his fortune producing unusable armaments, bribing officials, and even buying shell casings from other companies to maintain the appearance of an operational factory.

Schindler spends the last of his money as the Soviets advance and Germany finally surrenders. He is forced to flee before the Russians arrive but manages to convince the SS guards not to kill the Jewish workforce as they had been ordered to do. Schindler’s effort at the end of the war and his plea for the SS to “return to [their] families as men instead of murderers” results in a signed statement from his workers and a ring engraved with the Talmudic quotation “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” The film then cuts to the present day and shows the rescued Jews and their descendants visiting Schindler’s grave in Jerusalem.

Reception and legacy

Although many mainstream critics lauded the film upon its release, the film has proven controversial, with some critics objecting to its focus on two members of the Nazi Party rather than on Jewish characters, emphasis on a small number of Jews who were saved over the millions who were murdered, and the simplistic rendering of the Holocaust as a conflict between good and evil. The film is nonetheless widely perceived as a landmark of Holocaust storytelling, winning a total of 91 awards, including seven Academy Awards. Schindler’s List frequently appears on lists of top films and was included in the U.S. Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2004.

Production notes and credits

• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Screenplay: Steven Zaillian (based on Thomas Keneally’s book)
• Producers: Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen, and Branko Lustig
• Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
• Editor: Michael Kahn
• Music: John Williams
• Distributor: Universal Pictures
• Running time: 195 minutes
• Budget: $22 million
• Box office: $322 million

Cast

• Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler
• Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern
• Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth
• Caroline Goodall as Emilie Schindler
• Jonathan Sagall as Poldek Pfefferberg
• Embeth Davidtz as Helen Hirsch
• Malgorzata Gebel as Wiktoria Klonowska
• Mark Ivanir as Marcel Goldberg
• Oliwia Dabrowska as the Girl in Red

Academy Award wins

• Best picture: Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molten, and Branko Lustig
• Best director: Steven Spielberg
• Best adapted screenplay: Steven Zaillian
• Best original score: John Williams
• Best film editing: Michael Kahn
• Best cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
• Best art direction: Ewa Braun and Allan Starski