Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9781567302011 Format: Box set, Black & White, Color, Original recording reissued, Subtitled, NTSC ISBN: 1567302017 Label: New Yorker Video Manufacturer: New Yorker Video Number Of Items: 4 Publisher: New Yorker Video Release Date: June 27, 2000 Running Time: 503 minutes Studio: New Yorker Video Theatrical Release Date: 1985-11 Sales Rank: 10693
Amazon.com: To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realize that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts, but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfill that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years tracking people down, cajoling them to talk, asking them questions they didn't want to face. When soldiers refuse to appear on film, Lanzmann sneaks cameras in. When people are on the verge of breaking down and can't answer any more questions, Lanzmann asks anyway. He gives names to the victims--driving through a town that was predominantly Jewish before Hitler's time, a local points out which Jews owned what. Lanzmann travels the world, speaking to workers in Poland, survivors in Israel, officers in Germany. He is not a detached interviewer; his probings are deeply personal. One man farmed the land upon which Treblinka was built. "Didn't the screams bother you?" Lanzmann asks. When the farmer seems to brush the issues aside with a smile, Lanzmann's fury is noticeable. "Didn't all this bother you?" he demands angrily, only to be told, "When my neighbor cuts his thumb, I don't feel hurt." The responses, the details are difficult to hear, but critical nonetheless. Shoah tells the story of the most horrifying event of the 20th century, not chronologically and not with historical detail, but in an even more important way: person by person. --Jenny Brown
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Dishonest Filmmaker...
Lanzmann said that if he had found authentic pictures of homicidal gas chambers, he would have destroyed them. What he precisely said was this (Le Monde, March 3, 1994):
Rating: - A monumental examination of mankind's darkest period
SHOAH is too exhaustive a study (9 1/2 hours in length) to be considered the definitive Holocaust documentary. In 30 minutes, NIGHT AND FOG, Resnais' searing masterpiece gives us a concise picture of that ... Read More
Rating: - Problems with DVD
Disc 1 has problems. During chapter 40 the film freezes and won't play that chapter beyond the point where it freezes unless you skip ahead to the next chapter. Haven't watched the remaining discs yet, so ... Read More
Rating: - The Banality of Evil
In this carefully crafted documentary, Claude Landzman has shown all who have the willingness to listen and watch the tragic consequences of not believing ones own experience of events. Over and over the Germans, ... Read More
Rating: - Shoah
This is the most powerful work of documentation. I doubt if much more can be said about it.
- Dishonest Filmmaker...
- A monumental examination of mankind's darkest period