Judge Dennis Davis
Representations of the Holocaust in Film, Part 2
Judge Dennis David and Professor David Peimer - Representations of the Holocaust in Film, Part 2
- I want to say to everyone, welcome, welcome back, and thank you again for joining us, and for participating in Lockdown University. Today we’ll have Dennis and David talking about contemporary representations of the Holocaust in Film II, so a continuation from last week. So thank you, David and Dennis again, and Judy, and over to you.
- Okay, well, thanks so much, Wendy, Judy and Dennis as always, wonderful pleasure and happiness planning this during the week. And just all thoughts to everybody in Israel, and around the world. So what we’re going to do is frame this discussion with two-key points of debate, and it’s summed up in the “Shoah” or the Lanzmann/Spielberg debate as it’s known, which is the first point I want to make, and then I’ll come onto the second. In essence, Claude Lanzmann, as I’m sure many people know, is French, he was part of the resistance, etc. And in 1985, completed almost a decade of filming with the release of the nine-and-a-half-hour masterpiece “Shoah”. It is entirely based on interviews. There is no sense of the dramaturgy of archival footage, of the images we all know and seen of persons coming out of the camps, of troops going in. All those images are completely not represented. In addition, there are no corpses. And all he does is interview persons who belong to one of four categories, witnesses, survivors, bystanders or perpetrators. And he presents testimony in the idea of the question of how do you authentically represent history.
His mode is obviously documentary, testimony to bear witness. And in this sense, it’s documentary film. “Schindler” with Spielberg goes the opposite route, which is known loosely as the artistic route, where we have empathy being generated through an emotional structuring of dramatic sequence of events in a film, protagonist/antagonist. We see victims, perpetrators, we see survivor, etc., and we see bystanders. We see all these, but done from a theatrical or artistic approach. And, of course, there’s film visuals, the editing, the acting, etc. In Lanzmann, it’s all obviously only interviews with people who were either obviously survivors, or perpetrators, bystanders or indifferent, observers, if you like. So the Lanzmann debate is classic in terms of how do you represent, how do you tell the story of such an unspeakable, such a horrific extreme event in human history, if not the most grotesquely extreme human event in history? How do you represent this? How do you tell the story after the fact? How do you tell the story coming from this? And the idea of question of truth and authenticity really come to the fore in bearing witness. So we have in a loose frame, the documentary approach and the artistic approach. That is the debate in which we frame today’s discussion.
But there’s a second point which we want to make, and that is what I want to suggest is a new way perhaps of entering this debate, which is from whose point of view is the story told? And I think it’s a profound question, because in a way it bypasses the polemic, and the binary of it’s either documentary or it’s semi or fully fictionalised with an artistic approach. It’s rather from whose point of view is the story being told? Is it told from the perpetrator, from the victim, from the point of the dead and the murdered, from the point of view of the outsider, and so on, the more historical point of view, the individual characters. And I think this enables us to look a little bit more closely at a more contemporary approach perhaps, of how to tell the story using film or the visual media, let’s say. The last point I would like to make by way of introduction today is what happened before film? Before there was film, how were stories of history represented? How were the most extreme horrific, or the opposite, perhaps the most glorious, the stories of history represented before the invention of the moving image, whether TV, film, or Internet? How were stories of this kind in history represented before most people could read or write?
So I share this because it’s about storytelling, and the profundity, as Harari keeps mentioning all the time, having watched quite a bit of Harari over the last couple of weeks, the profound importance of storytelling is what binds communities, is what pulls people together, small or large, not only a nation state, but smaller groups of individuals, whether in the family, the community, the largest sense of the group. It’s through the story. It’s not only how we tell stories Friday night, or anytime, it’s the ideas which hold individual identities together in a community, it’s the stories capture the myths, capture the bearded legends perhaps of biblical times.
It’s through the stories we make coherent sense, meaning of life, it’s through the story that we understand or begin to try to understand cultures and each other, and their values or ideas we live by, or we glimpse or we deny. So it’s profoundly important. And together with that comes the idea that there is no singular point of view or genre in representing a story from history. This goes along with the evolution of documentary versus artistic debate. And that there is perhaps not a singular story or singular point of view, but rather this brings in a range, a variety. And then it’s for us to choose maybe which works better, which doesn’t, etc., and then to delve into the nuance. But that first requires a sense of the subtleties of this debate, really. Okay, so 1985 Lanzmann, and Judy, if we could start please, stop the share, with the first clip, which is an interview with Claude Lanzmann.
Video clip plays.
- Thank you, Judy. Just to take up a couple of points from the interview and from Lanzmann, so his film is nine-and-a-half-hours long of documentary and of interviewing all the different kinds of people from survivors to perpetrators, to representatives with allies and so on, and Polish people living nearby. The story here, the interview here, as he says, the survivor tells it in an incredible way. There’s always nevertheless a sense of drama, there’s a sense of storytelling, and the techniques of storytelling. I guess that’s really what I’m trying to look at in trying to move away from the binary discussion of it’s only authentic if it’s documentary, oral testimony, and not even visual, or if it’s done in a more artistic kind of filmic visual experience. Another example is the interview with Szymon Srebrnik, one of the very few who survived Chełmno. And the opening sequence in fact of the whole nine-and-a-half hours, is that we see him, we see Mr. Srebrnik, being rowed along the river, the Narew River, and as the boat glides through the almost calm waters, he starts to sing softly.
And we learned that he’s actually singing the song of a Nazi marching platoon. And we learn through his oral testimony, as he’s walking through the field and at the river, that he had to daily dump sacks of crushed bones of the murdered into the river. And two-days before the Russians came across Chelmno, he and all the other survivors in the camp, very few of them, were shot in the head, and he and very few miraculously survived. And I’m purposely trying to tell this here with my own voice, because this is the mode that Lanzmann’s extraordinary nine-and-a-half-hour documentary works, the human voice, the individual telling the story, and the individual who lived it, and the extraordinary intellectual and emotional power. And it’s one profound way of getting authenticity across in terms of telling the story. It’s a documentary of absences, there’s no newsreel footage, as he said, no old photos, no corpses, all the images that people around the world I think know only too well. Then the camera goes onto an empty field for several minutes. And just at the bottom, sometimes in the one section you’ll see the name Treblinka or Chelmno, etc. The meaning to the image is given by a word and an empty field. He interviews other survivors, he’s not just a neutral interviewer, he pushes them.
The one individual he mentions in the short clip that we showed, Abraham Bomba, and he had to cut hair in the camps. And the one day his wife and his sister were pushed into the section, and the man sitting next to him, standing next to him, had to cut their hair. And he knew that they were going to be gassed. And as he’s telling the story, he breaks down, Mr. Bomba breaks down, but Lanzmann pushes him and he says, “You have to do it, you have to tell the story.” So it’s not a neutral interviewer telling something so horrific as this, the survivor testimony, and how they are told, how they are brought out, the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee also has a certain dramaturgical storytelling element. There were testimonies of the Polish bystanders that he interviews as well. And obviously the ones who lived near many of the camps, they all knew, they were not oblivious. Their stories are told. Tells the stories of the allies doing nothing to save the Jews. 1943, a character by the name of Jan Karski as a Polish diplomat, is commissioned by the exiled Polish Government in London to tell the allied leaders about the fate of the Polish, part of whom are the Jews.
And I say that, which I’m going to come back to in a moment. Even in America, he even meets the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Jewish, and Justice Frankfurter says, “I don’t believe you.” He interviews others who just have the inability to believe what is going on, and gets them to tell their stories, pushes them, and gets Karski to be interviewed. He interviews Jan Karski, who was the guy going around in 1943 trying to get the word out, either just not believed or being met with denial or silence, or the refusal to do anything. 2009, a novel was written by a French writer about Jan Karski, about the Karski episode in this guy’s life. The novel became a bestseller in France, and Lanzmann has attacked it, and he called it a falsification of history, and of its protagonists because Karski was not necessarily pro-Jewish, he was trying to get the story out about what was happening to Poles at large, part of whom were Jewish. Very different emphasis. So I come back to the beginning, from whose point of view are the stories being told, not only with Lanzmann, but as we look at the different films today. From whose point of view and how are these stories told? And I think we can start to look perhaps in a newish way, which goes beyond some of these binary debates of the past, how to tell the story. Is it truth that can only emerge from an oral testimony of somebody who was there?
Perhaps, I’m not sure. Can truth emerge in another way? Theatre, art, film are not about imitating real life on the stage or screen. Ultimately they’re about making the stage or the screen come alive and live, not imitate life. And that requires an artistic approach to engender a kind of creative empathy in an audience, if you like. The one last point that you have to make before we go onto “Schindler”, is that whether it’s documentary, or whether it’s the more artistic approach, there’s always money involved, there are shareholders, there’s profit, whether it’s a documentary, there are ratings, whether it’s a artistic film, etc. There’s millions of people who view, the numbers of people who don’t view, and numbers of people it does get to. So it’s a highly complicated, complex discussion. And I hope that we today can just open, if you like, some of the key ideas for it. Dennis, over to you, thanks.
- Thank you, David. Perhaps I should just also start by reiterating what you said at the beginning about hoping that there’d be peace. It is interesting that in the Parshah of this week, the Torah portion that we would’ve read on the Shabbos, we read about the great, well, we have the blessings that we say on our children and the priests say upon us, we do it every Friday night. And the priests of course do it, the cohanim do it on festivals. And the last is , “May God’s countenance shine upon you "and may you have peace.” It’s very appropriate, it seems to me, for all of us at this particular point in time, particularly those people listening to us from Israel. I’m going to only make one or two small points on the Lanzmann, as a segue to my introduction to “Schindler”, and of course, the problem that David and I have is that each of these could be an hour, hour-and-a-half discussion all on their own. And one is trying to do the best one can in a shorter time. And the point I want to make about Lanzmann, of course, which is so interesting, is this is a profoundly insider’s view, because he essentially is documenting the survivors, the murderers, the bystanders. So it’s an insider’s view.
He tries as best he can to put us inside of the horror and as he says, without actually ever having somebody come out of the gas chamber to do that. And in a sense, the great themes here are death and survival. And he doesn’t shy away from either those. And for me particularly interesting is the dichotomy between the faces and the versions and narratives of the witnesses. And then you’ll see throughout this there are all sorts of quiet pastoral scenes, and they’re beautiful. And yet these are places where death occurred, underneath these pastoral places there lie graves of mass murder of people. It’s an extraordinary dichotomy that he poses. And in a sense, in a way, when David asks the question, from whose point of view? He may come closer to a holistic position than where I’m about to go, which is to deal with “Schindler”. And let me therefore just give some background to “Schindler’s List,” some of which I’m sure you all know, but let’s just recap. So it turns out that of course “Schindler’s List” was based on the film by Thomas Keneally called “Schindler’s Ark”, the novelist.
And what is particularly interesting about that is that Keneally essentially got to know about Schindler because he went into a pawn shop in 1980 where he met a man who had a slightly different name then, but his real name was Poldek Pfefferberg. And he had been a survivor of the Holocaust, and he had been actually saved by Schindler. And it was as a result of this, that this engagement with Pfefferberg, who had dedicated his life to basically propagate the Schindler story, that Keneally then wrote the novel, which ultimately gave rise to the film. And what is interesting about the film is that although Spielberg himself bought the rights to the film, he was extremely reluctant to actually direct the film, and curiously, because we are going to deal with “The Pianist”, David will discuss “The Pianist” with you shortly, he wanted Roman Polanski to do “Schindler’s List.” And actually when I think and see the contrast between “Schindler’s List” and “The Pianist”, I began to understand why Polanski was reluctant to do that. He then actually approached Martin Scorsese to direct the film “Schindler’s List”.
And again, that was turned down by Martin Scorsese, and an arrangement was made where Scorsese actually directed another film, which I’ll think about in a moment. And as a result of which he then finally, that is finally Spielberg directed the film. Now the fundamental proposition, when again we ask from whose point of view is the story told? What is crucial here is that the story is told from the position of Oskar Schindler. And what is interesting about that is just in terms of the choice, that Schindler himself was a member of the Nazi party. It is true that he saved approximately 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust through employing them at his enamelware and munitions factories. But it’s also true that he started off as an entrepreneur who needed cheap labour for his factories, made a deal to hire Jews. And it was basically a gradual change of his focus in which the film documents, which led him to do a whole range of extraordinary acts in order to preserve 1,200 Jews.
So the key insight to the film in many ways is that Schindler was directly changed from being a heedless awful capitalist to a guardian angel with little concern for anything other than the lives of these workers. And that itself is an interesting question as to whether that’s the appropriate approach to take to portraying the Holocaust as such. And indeed, of course, if you want to know what then the underlying theme is, it comes late in the film where Schindler’s presented with a ring, which is inscribed by those who he saved with a Talmudic phrase, “He who saves a life, saves the world.” And the fundamental proposition therefore is that Schindler, through his actions, not just saved a life, but saved the world by saving 1,200 people and more. And the real question therefore is whether in fact that proposition of trying to portray the Holocaust through the eyes of Oskar Schindler is itself something that reflects a coherent and plausible answer to the questions David posed at the beginning. Now let me be quite clear about it, the film, there are a number of observations I would make before one gets into the critique.
And of course this could take, as I say, a long time, but I don’t have it. So let me just give you some of the observations. The fact is that the film did win a series of Academy Awards, Best Original Soundtrack, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Director, etc. There is absolutely no question about it that when this particular film came out in 1993, it was, and this goes back to a dilemma I articulated last week when we spoke about the mini-series “Holocaust”, that whilst that was subjected to an excoriating critique by Elie Wiesel, on the one hand, we had to accept that some 20-million Germans had actually watched it in 1979, and therefore had a whole range, rather effect. So the question which arises here, of course, is well, do we weigh that up against the kind of criticism that I will raise with you for discussion in a moment. So that’s a fundamental point. But as a film, it has some remarkable features to it.
It starts in a quite graphic way. My dear wife Claudette, who was the person who introduced me to the semiotics of film so long ago when I think both of us were young, it seems to be a long time ago, always used to get angry with me, because I would be late and therefore cause her to be late to watch the beginning of the film. And she always pointed out to me, the framing of a film at the beginning is absolutely crucial. And in this case, that is totally true. The film starts off in colour, and it starts off with the lighting of two candles. And all you see is the light of one, and then the light of another. And then the film, still in colour, focuses attention on a family saying the Kiddush on a Friday night, Shabbos. And then, as that starts to fade, you see the two lights, one light, and then ultimately the extinction of the flame, and just a puff of smoke. And the film then transmogrifies into black and white, which it is for almost all of the film. And that symbolic notion of the light of Judaism being extinguished, and being replaced by the horror of the Holocaust is an incredibly graphic scene. It is also true that whilst the film focuses on Schindler, it also focuses on those who survive. On the Ben Kingsley character, who is, as it were, almost the fixer, and is somebody who survives by cooperating as best he can in circumstances whereby he causes the survival of a whole lot of his fellow Jews, and of course, the problematic of that kind of collaboration.
And then of course there is the magnificent, I use that in inverted commas, ‘cause it’s so horrific, performance by that great actor Ralph Fiennes, who really is a remarkable actor, of Amon Goeth, who was of course the Commandant in Krakow. His dates were 1908, 1946, he was executed by the Polish. The evidence suggests that when they basically invaded and destroyed the Krakow ghetto, he himself shot dead between 30 to 90-children and women. And the brutality, and the absolute horror of his conduct is extraordinarily captured by this performance by Fiennes. So it’s not as if there is a portrayal of a level of horror in the film, not so much it seems to me here of the banality of evil, but of the actual horror in the most egregious form. And the Fiennes character really leaves you with no illusions about precisely what the Nazis were up to in the camps, and the brutality that was forced upon the Jewish captives of the camp. But ultimately the film is about Schindler, and we need to evaluate it in that way. But it does have, as I say, extraordinary scenes. One of them I’m about to show you now, let us see the clip. I will make a couple of comments about it, and then I’ll just develop the critique briefly before we move on to “The Pianist”.
Video clip plays.
Oh, please, let’s go, let’s go. Come on.
Okay. Now this is a quite breathtaking scene of filmmaking, the little girl, of course in the red coat here, and that’s a little bit of colour there, really in some ways appears to be, it’s the only image after the first couple of minutes until the end, 197-minutes of the film of black and white, in colour. And it seems to symbolise the blood of the Jewish people or of innocence or of hope. It may well, in fact, focus upon a fundamental proposition of the film that is of hope and innocence, of the cognitive and emotional facets of any form of human narrative. And what I think is important as Schindler notices this little girl in the red coat, she’s wandering the streets aimlessly as the horror of the liquidation of the ghetto continues. And there’s almost a perception of the innocence of the girl and the hope that when she hides away unnoticed in the building, it’s with this scene that Spielberg might have wanted to show Schindler finally realising the absolute horror of the situation. By the way, later in the film, he sees the red coat of the little girl in a pile of exhumed bodies in a mass grave, and in a way trying to show I think, Spielberg, just in that morbid scene, the loss of any hope, the loss of any innocence.
However, I should tell you that just the red coat is a real depiction because the girl in the red coat happened to be a little girl called, at the time, Roma Ligocka, and she was a survivor of the Krakow ghetto. And she wrote a book called “The Girl in the Red Coat” after the war. But the depiction of the horror and the girl, and the only little bit of colour until the end, apart from the beginning, is a remarkable framing of the horror. Now whether in fact the focus on Schindler satisfies you, that this is the kind of depiction of the Holocaust that you consider to be appropriate, or whether it is a kind of Hollywood-type approach to this existential foundational crisis in the world, I leave to you. But I’d like if I may, by way of conclusion, to read you just a short part of a review that Jacob Epstein did in 1994 in the New York Review of Books, which takes the other approach, an approach that you may think is more appropriate to “Schindler’s List” as compared to say the “Shoah”.
Let me read it. “Hitler’s genocide was a crime against humanity, "a crime in which a great part of humanity "was itself an accomplice. "Hitler’s victims were multitudinous, but his accomplices "both active and passive, and not simply in Germany, "were far more numerous. "Schindler was an exotic exception and Spielberg’s film, "lets viewers take comfort and pride "in his virtuous behaviour, "but the Holocaust raises terrible questions "about the quality of our species, "and it is these questions that Stephen Spielberg, "for all his good intentions and craftsmanship, "did not ask, perhaps because they did not occur to him. "His coarse and self-indulgent Nazis "suggest that he has grasped "the banality of evil, but he’s not "understood its universality, its persistence "or the magnitude of its victory in our time. "This is not to say that in evil times good deeds "may not be celebrated, they must be celebrated, "but with some sense of historical perspective, "and here Spielberg fails.
"He has placed the oddity Schindler "in the foreground of his tale, "and let him determine the triumphant outcome. "But Schindler’s good deed was marginal "and its motivation obscure, so different "from behaviour of countless others at the time and since, "as to suggest that he might have come from "a different planet, like another "famous Spielberg character.” Well, that’s a particularly excoriating critique. It essentially reflects back on a proposition advanced by Elie Wiesel about the “Holocaust” mini-series, notwithstanding that there’s no doubt from a technical and filming point of view, as I’ve tried to indicate, “Schindler’s List” is in a different league. But I will leave it to you to judge for yourself about this particular proposition. And over to you, David, I see time is running, so perhaps we should move on. Obviously you can make some comments about this before moving on to “The Pianist”.
- Yeah, thank you, Dennis. And to move onto Polanski’s “The Pianist”, just one quick note from whose perspective is the story told. In that scene that we just saw, in the clip, we see Schindler, the ruthless, amoral, immoral, unempathetic Nazi character coming to consciousness, coming to a dawning realisation, the position of power and the horse, everything, etc. We see the horror of what is happening, the sounds, the horror, and then the little girl in the red dress. So we see the point of view of the man coming to realisation of what on earth is really going on. And then we end the clip with a point of view of the little girl in the red dress hiding terrified for her life, every heartbeat, under a bed. And that to me is part of the artistry involved in the shifting of points of view. I’m not saying he does this in every scene, but the reason why that scene is extraordinary is that he has a constantly shifting point of view, which enables us for a moment to have a sense of the universality of the most extreme horror imaginable.
A way of coming in through two points of view. Okay, to go onto “The Pianist” with Polanski, just to speak a little bit before we show the clip, this is for me an extraordinary and incredible film in the way that these others are that we’re looking at today. It tells the story, just to quickly refresh for perhaps some who may not have seen it, it tells the true story of a Jewish Polish man who was a classical musician who survives in Poland through, I would suggest, stoicism, determination, luck, and an absolute commitment to try and survive. It’s not a thriller, it avoids the temptation to be sentimental, there is no sentiment. It’s a story of survival without appearing to be heroically triumphant. There’s no sentiment of that kind thrown in via Hollywood. The pianist is witness to what he saw and what happened to him. And we come into the whole experience of this particular story of the holocaust, approach to the story, through that. Surviving is not framed as a heroic victory. We know that all his family and friends, everybody have died. It’s not a triumphant, it’s not a victory even, it’s the sheer determination, guts, stoicism, luck, whatever to survive, and extraordinary in that way.
And I think so contemporary, and probably is it any less or more authentic? It’s also based on his true story. So it’s based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was Jewish, as I said, and playing Chopin on a Warsaw radio station when the first German bombs fell in September '39. Szpilman’s family was prosperous and secure, and his own and Szpilman’s reaction was, “I’m not going anywhere, we’ll be okay.” Well, we watch as the Nazi noose tightens. The Jews are forced to move to the Warsaw ghettos. We see them having to build the walls brick-by-brick of a ghetto. We see young Jewish men forced into being part of the police to enforce Nazi regulations or volunteering or semi. We see a good friend of Szpilman’s, a Jewish policeman who saves his life literally by the second by forcing or pulling him off the train bound for the camps. The rest of his family and friends, hauled, but he’s forced and taken off by his friend, who’s a Jewish policeman, literally with a couple of seconds to go.
It’s all based on what happened. And then the movie tells the incredible story of how Szpilman survived, the hiding in Warsaw with some help from some friendly and kind Polish people who were part of the resistance. Polanski himself was a Holocaust survivor, it’s important to know. And he was saved at one point when his father pushed him through the barbed wire of a camp. And he, in a way, had a similar life to Szpilman. Szpilman is older, Polanski was much younger, 12, 13, 11. He knew about his mother being gassed, what had happened with his father and all friends, family, this is Polanski. And Polanski wandered around Krakow and Warsaw a terrified, freaked-out child, only cared for by the kindness of a couple of strangers, somehow almost miraculously surviving. His own survival story mirrors Szpilman. And as we said, Spielberg tried to get him to direct “Schindler”, but this perhaps is the story closer to Polanski’s own life, which perhaps he felt that he could tell, a story of survival without the heroics of survival. A story from experience, but told with the touch and the painting, the colour, the pictures, the sound, the images, of an extraordinary film artist. Judy, if we could show it, please.
This is the scene where, after all the horror, late in the war, late in 1944, he comes across this German officer, which actually happened, just before the Russians come, and just before the Germans are about to leave Warsaw. And he thinks he’s playing before he’s about to be killed. Hungry, starving, freezing cold, terrified. Okay, thank you, Judy. Just to sum up at the end, the point of view here is obviously telling the story through Szpilman, he thinks he’s going to be killed in a moment. And we see the subtle change in this German officer. And something starts to dawn of a vague glimpse of what was, of not only of Chopin, but the music, the culture, something else. And he ends up bringing Szpilman some bread, some food, helps him to survive, leaves him his coat at the end. So this is based on the true story of this man in Poland, and after the war, he became a very well-known pianist, classical pianist in Poland, resumed his job with the radio, and playing in orchestras, etc.
The German officer who brought him bread and food came in the last months of the war, he was picked up by the Russians, and died in a Russian prisoner of war camp. So finally, it’s the point of view of a different kind of courage. Szpilman as a survivor, he’s not a fighter, he’s not even a hero in the cliched sense of the word hero. He’s a man who does all he can to save himself. He’s a contemporary man. Polanski refuses to turn his survival into heroic triumph or victory. He records his journey as a story of a witness, of a man who went through this, saw this, remembered this, and tells it, but with extraordinary artistic ability to evoke emotion in the midst of extreme horror and war. And I leave that with you as a different kind of way of so many nuanced, subtle, intelligent ways of telling stories. None of them right/worse, some better, some worse. But this is what it can generate. Okay, Dennis, over to you.
- Yeah, gee, David, I think we could have such a wonderful exchange about the comparison between “Schindler’s List” and “The Pianist”. And just one point just to throw into the mix is it’s possible because, and thanks to you I listened to the interview, and I recommend everybody does so, the interview that Polanski gave about this film, which is on YouTube. But it really is interesting that because he was a film director, as a small child suffered through or lived through this entire process that perhaps perspective is different to that of a director such as a Spielberg in “Schindler’s List”. But I won’t develop that, I’ll just leave it as a question mark. So we’ve got a couple of minutes for the last film, and we end in a strange way where we began with a courtroom drama. We started our discussion last week with “Judgement in Nuremberg”, which of course was a fictionalised account of the trial of German judges. And we will be coming back to “Judgement at Nuremberg” in a broader sense from next week. But here in “Denial”, the last of the films that we’re going to discuss, this is a real courtroom drama.
And what happened very briefly was that Deborah Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University, had published in 1996 a book called “Denying the Holocaust, "the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory”. In the book, she had rounded on at some particular point, the work of David Irving’s, whom she described as a, quote, “One of the most dangerous spokespersons "for the Holocaust denial.” And who’d written a whole series of works, which effectively amounted to denial of the Holocaust. And the film is essentially a depiction of the trial, which was launched because Irving sued Lipstadt in London, not in America, because he thought there were legal advantages to doing so. Meaning, unlike the American defamation laws protected as they are to some extent by the First Amendment, and the implications thereof, here in London, or here I mean, for those of you in London, there would’ve had to have been a defence put up of justification, namely to say that Irving had distorted the facts, the onus was now on Lipstadt’s legal team to do precisely that.
And it is quite an extraordinary case in its own way for all sorts of reasons. But fundamental to it was that the case then became a trial of the Holocaust. So we’re ending with essentially a film which deals precisely, with a film which was really a trial of the veracity of the Holocaust, because Irving was essentially suggesting that whilst people might have died in the concentration camps through disease and ill-health, there were no gas chambers. And there’d been no attempt at genocide by Hitler and his minions. And because Lipstadt was now called upon to effectively say, “Look, what I’m saying about Irving, "his manipulation of the truth, his falsehoods, "all of that, I’m justified in doing so, "they are correct, my allegations.” It meant that she had to come with a vast team, and Penguin, who were her publishers, therefore who had been sued together with her did precisely that. And they brought onto the field of legal players that were some of the most distinguished historians of the Holocaust, Richard Evans from Oxford University, who spent over two-years researching all of Irving’s work and published thereafter material in this particular guard.
And Christopher Browning, they were crucial key witnesses in this case, effectively to suggest that what Lipstadt had said about Irving was correct. She, of course, was aided by that polymath lawyer, just wonderful lawyer Anthony Julius from London. Of course, how many lawyers can write a PhD thesis on T.S. Eliot and antisemitism and then be Princess Diana’s lawyer in a divorce trial. He’s one of the most distinguished solicitors of his generation, and write all of these wonderful works on a whole range of issues such as Eliot and antisemitism. But he’s portrayed in the film as well. And so what the film effectively seeks to do is to depict this trial, which if it had gone the other way, would’ve been utterly disastrous, because a British court would’ve actually said that Irving had a point. The film, it’s called “Denial”. It’s a nice play on words, because there are two aspects to the denial. The one of course is Irving’s own denial of the Holocaust. The other is the denial that the way the defence ran the case was not to put Irving into the witness, sorry, not to put Lipstadt into the witness box. And the reason that that was done was because they did not want Irving to cross-examine her, and therefore this land up by being an even more skewed political trial than otherwise would be the case.
So she was denied a voice in the case, and had to keep schtum throughout. Her role is played by Rachel Weisz. And an interesting aspect about that was that when I interviewed Deborah Lipstadt together, it was an extraordinary interview with Philip Sands at the Franschhoek Book Fair in Cape Town some years ago, and asked her what it was like being portrayed by Rachel Weisz, she told me an extraordinary story that in an early scene there are a pile of books in her study and you could see these books. And I can’t remember which the book was, but she said she was in constant conversation with Rachel Weisz about the role. And Rachel Weisz’s mother was very ill at the time, and she went to see the mother, and spoke to her about these books.
And it turned out that the one book on the top of the pile was a book that Rachel Weisz’s mother had herself in Hungary before the war, which was a remarkable synergy in this particular regard. I’m not going to say more about this, say for two aspects, that the film, the director of the film said the following about it, he said this, “If we can spark and inspire a conversation "and get people to say that there’s a difference "between opinion and fact, then we have done good.” And in a sense that’s what it’s about. The second observation I’ll make before showing you a clip of the film is the incredible performance. If Ralph Fiennes was brilliant as Amon Goeth, and showing the barbarism of a Nazi commander at the time, the performance by Timothy Spall, wonderful character actor who plays Irving, and plays him in a way of almost the worst kind of upper class monster luring at his Caribbean nanny’s breasts, sneering down his nose at Lipstadt, producing supposed historical facts of pomposity, which serves him well on the white genocide lecture circuit, all of this is portrayed.
And what is counter-posed is the attempt at some authenticity of the Holocaust, which we’ve been talking about, versus this notion of falsehoods, of lies, which is fake news, if you wish, which makes it an important film for that way. I would not want to suggest that it’s in the same form and class as either “Schindler’s List” or “The Pianist”. But it’s important, and I’m going to just play you one clip to give you a flavour of the film, and the flavour of the role played by Irving, where he’s cross-examined by Richard Rampton, a very famous and eminent libel silk in London who’s cross-examining him, and also showing a depiction of the kind of racism which Irving spews out, which of course is important, it’s important to realise that in fact these kind of Holocaust deniers are such racists that essentially their hatred leaves no boundaries. And so let’s just have a look at this clip as we conclude our discussion of the portrayal of the Holocaust.
Video clip plays.
But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit it’s this, when I switch on my television set and I see one of them reading our news to us.
[Rampton] Mr. Irving, who’s the them and who’s the us?
Trevor McDonald.
McDonald?
A newsreader, My Lord. A black newsreader.
Well, in fact, this is a stock speech I used to make, I used to say in the good old days, the announcer would wear a dinner jacket, and now they’ve got women reading the news, and it’s just part of a general speech.
[Rampton] Yes, it is our news, and they’re reading it to me.
If they could have their own news, which they were reading, I suppose would be very interesting. But for the time being, I’d be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner jacketed gentleman reading the important news, followed by a lady reading the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news on muggings and drugs.
The rest lost in loud laughter and applause. Are you not appalled by that?
Not in the least. It was a witty speech delivered after dinner to an audience at a private club.
You were talking to a bunch of racists.
They were not, they were perfectly ordinary guests.
Ordinary people, then why were there cheers?
Well, obviously they liked the jokes.
Mr. Irving, I think you might be advised to have a look at your own diary if you wouldn’t mind. 38 please, Mr. Irving, 38, tab 10 of the bundle K4. “A quiet evening at home, Jessica”, who is Jessica?
[Irving] My little infant child?
[Rampton] Yes.
She was nine-months-old at the time.
Nine-months-old in September 1994. “Jessica is turning into a fine little lady. "She sits very upright on an ordinary chair, "a product of our regular walks to the bank I am sure. "On those walks we sing the Binkity-Bankity-Bong song. "She stars in a poem when half-breed children "are wheeled past”. And then you go into italics, “I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian, "I have no plans to marry an ape or Rastafarian.” Racist, Mr. Irving? Anti-Semitic, Mr. Irving?
I do not think so.
[Rampton] Teaching your little child this kind of poison.
Do you think a nine-month-old can understand words spoken in English or any other language?
This poor little child has been taught a racist ditty by her racist and perverted father.
Have you ever read Edward Lear, Hilaire Belloc?
They haven’t brought a libel action, Mr. Irving, you have. You sued because you said that we had called you a racist and an extremist.
Yes, and I’m not a racist.
Mr. Irving, look at the words on the page.
Video clip ends.
- It’s a remarkably good performance by Tom Wilkinson, acting as Richard Rampton. And one of the issues just on that, if I may say, is again, in the way that Spielberg depicts a change in Schindler from beginning to end, in this particular case, what is interesting is that Rampton is portrayed as a very fine silk, he’s not entirely sure about Lipstadt nor about the case. And then they go, they show an actual visit of the legal team to Auschwitz. And one starts to see in a sense just the sense in which for Wilkinson, by the end of it, sorry, Rampton played by Wilkinson, is not an ordinary case. And whilst this film, again, may not be in the same technical standards of filmic semiotic brilliance as the other two, what I would want to suggest is that it’s a very reliable portrayal of a vitally important case, itself deserving of a full analysis.
But what it shows, I think, is just precisely what we’re dealing with in its counter-position between Irving, his defence and what Lipstadt was saying in her very fine book. And in that sense, it does serve to provide further education about the horrors, not just of the Holocaust, but of the people who portray fake news, and warning us that we should not defend these kinds of people at any cost, and that those who do wherever they be, should equally be condemned. Those are important lessons from this particular film, which as I say, could deserve a full forensic analysis, because of the interesting legal questions and historical questions raised. Now we’re way beyond time, and I’ll leave it at that. So, David, I think thank you everybody. I think there’ll probably be some questions to answer, which we can dutifully do now. David, if you want to start off.
Q&A and Comments:
- Sure. And thanks so much, Dennis and Judy, for sharing today.
Okay, just to start then from Frieda, “For me "Schindler” is just another Hollywood film, “very specific, but still shallow.” I think we’ve discussed some of these ideas, where it can be accused of being shallow, where not. The one area I might only agree a tiny bit, because I don’t agree overall, is that there is a certain heroism attributed to Schindler, which is not with Szpilman in “The Pianist”, and some other films of a similar nature, but I think it’s a tiny small point. I think overall it opened the floodgates for the world to really have a way in to the most evil event of human history. I really think the power of Hollywood, and “Schindler’s List” cannot be underestimated.
If I can just say that, David, before you get on, just to say, Amen, to what you’ve said, because whilst I did put up Jacob Epstein’s critique, and I do think there is some real merit in it, at the end of the day, there is no doubt that “Schindler’s List” exponentially, as it were, ensured that there’d be a growth of interest and concern about the Holocaust in a way that no other film had perhaps done. And I think for that reason I agree with you entirely.
And also encouraged discussion and a narrative.
Yes, I agree with that too, Wendy, absolutely right.
Exactly, Wendy. And for a similar reason, the film “Denial”, the one we showed at the end of the trial of Irving.
Yes, did the same thing.
Irving, it’s vital, it’s so important, as you were saying for today, Dennis, fake news, once you start fake news, it can be with colour, race, religion, it’s going to always get reviewed.
And that’s why Timothy Spall’s portrayal of Irving is so brilliant in this regard. I don’t want to get into contemporary issues now, but people should think about it.
Okay, then going on to Romaine, “Surely told from the director’s point of view”. Yes, but there’s the director, there’s the writer, we can go onto the editor of course, and then the actors, their interpretation. But what I’m looking at overall is from whose story, from whose point of view is the story told as we experience it in the 90-minutes of watching where we’re not necessarily thinking of the director or the others, but good point there.
Sorry, Hindi, your point is correct about Aviva Kempner’s film on Vilna. It’s a very good documentary on resistance, of course taking a slightly different perspective.
Okay, then Anna, ancient Greece, Greek Theatre, Greek tragedy stories about historical events and traumatic events. Yep, absolutely. The story of Troy itself, Homer’s Ulysses is a story of a myth, a legend, part-truth, part-not, but it’s filled with all these things. How are these stories told, pre-film, pre the visual, oral storytelling obviously handed down over generations and aeons, which I think contribute to the richness of the discussion and the debate, that’s really trying to get away from the either/or approach. Either it’s authentic documentary or it’s semi-inauthentic fiction. Then Victoria, “Son of Saul” gets close to the gas chambers, brilliant film, “Son of Saul”, so powerful. If we had more time.
One of the ones we just couldn’t do, yeah.
So many, absolutely. Gerald, “I have a huge problem with Schindler. "The Jews are presented as one-dimensional, "the Germans have depth as multi-dimensional. "Their angst, the inner conflict, moral struggle "of Schindler. "I find Spielberg’s film disgusting and dangerous "and degrading to Jews, to the show itself.” Dennis, would you like to respond?
I don’t agree at all with that, Gerald. I respectfully disagree with you. I don’t think that the Jews were presented as one-dimensional. I think the portrayal of Ben Kingsley and others were particularly nuanced. And I certainly don’t see the Amon Goeth character, who was the central German portrayed as anything than multi-dimensional. Yes, the way Ralph Fiennes played him was just, I think, an extraordinarily brilliant portrayal of brutality and amorality. And, no, I don’t, and I certainly think the little clip that I showed you, of which there are others, reveal that luminously, and we can have a debate about that. But I don’t agree, I don’t think… I suppose as I tried to put out, we could critique it on the basis that it didn’t have the perspective, it didn’t portray it from a point of view that you may agree with, and that I would understand perfectly, and that’s what Epstein’s saying. But beyond that, I wouldn’t go.
I would also just add on, I agree entirely with you, Dennis. and let’s not underestimate the Ben Kingsley character.
Very nuance.
Such nuance, subtlety and range, so much pain and suffering that is held so tight inside, and it’s not an naive victim. And then gratitude, thank you, a great hero for helping me. I don’t believe that for a second. I think there’s far more subtlety, nuance and range in the Ben Kingsley character.
[Dennis] I agree with that.
And I think otherwise we would not go through an emotional journey, if there wasn’t a triangle of Schindler, Goeth, and Stern. Anna, “A powerful scene from 'Shoah’, "survivor who is interviewed while he stands, "continues to cut a man’s hair. "He was a barber in Auschwitz and he worked as a barber.” Yeah, thank you, Anna. I actually had a barber when I studied at Columbia, there was a barber just down the road from Columbia who had been in Auschwitz and had the tattooed number. And his story was, well, you can imagine. Okay, let’s go on, thank you. To Betty. “My mother repeatedly stressed to us "it is not just hope that kept them going emotionally, "it was difference, the will to survive. "They wanted to tell a story, the partisan’s song.”
Which is portrayed there, yes, in that scene.
Great, okay. Frieda, “David, only because I knew Mr. Srebrnik and saw "Shoah”, I realised that you talk about Chelmno, it is not pronounced, Helmno, thank you, Frieda. And my apology for mispronunciation. Alison, “‘Shoah’ was difficult emotionally for me to watch. "I only saw the first part.” It’s an extraordinary achievement. And I guess the main point here is that even though he doesn’t show archival footage, he doesn’t show any photos or any of that. He only shows interviews. He does, as Dennis mentioned, that one contrast show a very peaceful calm field and then the word Treblinka comes onto the screen. And you see a river, and then you hear what happened with the river. So he is dealing with a visual medium of film. And I don’t think it’s as simple as documentary equals authenticity, and the other equals fictional artistry. And I guess what we’re trying to push today is a new approach, a different approach to understanding these questions, but very powerful what you’re saying. Sorry, they produce as emotional an effect in their different ways.
No, Jeanette, when you say a Pfefferberg shop was an elegant luggage shop, I bow to superior knowledge. I had read that it was a pawn chop, but obviously that’s not necessary correct. And you’re right, sorry, thank you for reminding me that Mr. Pfefferberg had gone under the name of Page at that time, yes, I’d forgotten about that.
Okay, then Judy. The lecturer was a Christian Pole who spoken in Yiddish, he said Lanzmann had solicited Simone Veil for funding “Shoah”. In spite of the fact that she was an Auschwitz survivor refused him funds, she was in charge of releasing funds for artists. As always, whether it’s documentary or fiction or artistry, there’s the question of the money, the ratings, the profit, etc, which is always going to have an impact from another point of view in terms of how the story is told in the end. June, “I’m a daughter of survivors. "The testimony is sacred and invaluable, "however, has there not always been a place "for great artists to be available to inhabit the lives "of those who suffer and through the alchemy "of their skill and brilliance to some degree or another, "bring these experiences to greater audience "through music, painting, literature, art.” Exactly, June, what great artists are meant to do, or least partly. Joan, “Schindler sold the ring, it meant nothing to him.”
Yeah, he had a really sad demise to his life at the end. But it is true, and many of the survivors actually bailed him out of a number of failed businesses thereafter, that’s absolutely correct.
And then, Dennis, would you like to take Anne’s question? What do you think of…
I don’t really have…
Okay, Frieda, Polanski’s father survived, yeah, the Plaszow camp. Roman turns it into an autobiographical, yeah, The red coat is now in Yad Vashem, thank you, Sheila.
Sorry, for the mispronouncing, I can never pronounce these things properly, but it is interesting that that girl in the red coat as you say, was a book about the impact on the life of that person. Absolutely, right. And it’s interesting that Spielberg had used that and integrated it into the film, which again, I think just supports the argument of a somewhat more nuanced film than perhaps the critics show.
And I think Sadie’s point, just reiterating what we’re saying, I can never forget the impact when Joanna, a remarkable human being who I met and lives in London and survived Theresienstadt. And when she said to me that “Schindler’s List” opened the world of education to the Holocaust, and so many more people got to understand and learn about it. And it was the film, she said, that was the dividing, I guess the dividing line, which is really important. Sally, the point you’re making.
Q: Andrew, “What is the music being played behind it?”
A: - [Dennis] That’s the Partisan Song, yeah.
Michelle, the actress.
It’s interesting, I think she eventually she saw it when she was 15, if I recall correctly. But you’re quite right, Rach.
Monica, “We may have our views on content representation. "Do you not think these films brought everyday people to theatres?”
[David] Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. And ultimately, perhaps that’s the bigger story of them all. “Many survivors did not speak until later years.” Patricia, “I’ve never forgotten the desperation of him "carrying the huge can.” Brendi, we’ve spoken, Elaine, “Did the piece played in ‘The Pianist’ "have any significance?” It was the piece that he was playing, or that I believe Szpilman played quite a bit for the Warsaw radio obviously before 1939. Paula, “Agree ‘The Pianist” is exceptional. “Spielberg, it seems the audience can identify…” Well, I don’t entirely agree with you, Paula. I think Spielberg does try to show in that clip, we are seeing, we, the audience, are seeing what is happening through the eyes of the Schindler character, and then down onto the streets. And then finally the little girl. He’s shifting the point of view all the time, and that’s artistry. He’s not just presenting performing heads. So I wouldn’t underestimate the power of what Spielberg is doing and what he’s aware of at all. And I don’t think it is just a single story, there’s this triangle of stories happening there. Gail, “Hi”, welcome, “thanks from Joburg”. “Adrian Brody’s face as filmed reminiscent of iconography of Jesus on the cross.” There are some images, I guess of some Italian paintings and others, which show that image of Christ. Thanks, Gail. Lawrence, “Kubrick said he has struggled "to make a Holocaust movie.” That’s another whole discussion. Dennis, do you want to take some questions now?
Yeah, I’m just going where we are. Sorry, Hindi, “Toronto at the age of 99,” yes. I think he was a relative, yeah. Certainly had a very distinguished career thereafter, remarkably wonderful pianist. “I thought you were going to talk about 'Life Is Beautiful’.” Pat, there’s so many other films that we could have spoken about. We had two sessions. We discovered that after last Saturday we could only get done four, we barely did that. So, yeah, I’m not sure “Life is Beautiful” deserves the same treatment as either “Schindler’s List” or “The Pianist”. David might have a different view on it.
No, I definitely agree with you, Dennis.
“I can recommend a Polish film called ‘Aida’ "worth watching”, thank you very much, Monty. “There was an exhibit at the Royal Ontario "called the Evidence Room, which I believe "is evidence at the trial.” Sarah, are you talking about the Lipstadt trial? And, yes, indeed, there was a whole a lot of evidence set by the architectural expert, a Dutch architectural expert, who essentially was called to testify on all the architectural design of Auschwitz to show that there were clearly gas chambers, because there was a whole dispute about various issues, called Robert Jan van Pelt. That is true, that material is available. I agree with you, Anna, about the books by Deborah Lipstadt, who I very much enjoyed interviewing when I did. She’s a wonderful woman. The name of the film was “Denial”. How do you compare the interviews in Yad Vashem by the Spielberg Foundation to those in “Shoah” documentary? Well, I don’t know. I certainly think that for me, the “Shoah” documentaries, I think, and part of the reason is that I just find them so remarkable is precisely what David said. And in fact, if we spoke about “Shoah”, which we could have done for a whole hour, one could have actually shown you a series of the texts of the interviews in which he pursues people like the barber, not in a bad way, but in a sense in making sure that he gets the stuff out.
I just think those engagements are the most remarkable documents I’ve read or seen in relation to the “Shoah”. Thank you very much, Laurie. “The evidence was created”. Yes, I’ve answered that, that’s van Pelt. “The brilliance of ‘Schindler’s List’ was that "it was so accessible to everyone.” Caroline, I would agree. Cheryl, “It would be nice if the world "didn’t give Holocaust deniers a free pass "like Mahmoud Abbas for denying the Holocaust.” Well, I agree with you about that. Jack, “One of the most memorable comments about writing "about the Holocaust for me was George Steiner "talked about the impossibility of depicting any aspect.” Yeah, I mean that’s a really interesting point. And in fact, I was reading one of the reviews on the Lanzmann in preparation for this, made exactly the same particular point. It’s such a difficult issue. Ralph Fiennes, thank you very much, Hilary. I’m terrible with pronunciations, but what an actor. Alfreda, “My father had a cousin, his wife "and her sister worked for Schindler, "and was sad and came to South Africa.” Oh, that’s very interesting. Yeah, thank you very much to Yvonne and to Nancy.
Can I just go back to the one here from 895194. “Just to mention, the end of ‘Schindler’s List’, the film, when the actual survivors are seen at the cemetery cannot be underestimated”, this is from Marcel.
Yeah, sorry, David, good point, right at the end.
I just think it’s a really important powerful point, and the originality of the filmmaker to include that, because what do you do at the end? Not extraordinary artistically, but the cold reality.
I agree with you, and that’s why I think we’ve basically finished with the questions. But let me just end my one point on that, that with all the kind of criticism about “Schindler’s List” and I think that I still on balance take the view that both of us have taken in relation to that. Some of that filming is absolutely extraordinary. It really is art of the highest order, both the beginning and the red coat scene, and many others in the film. Anyway, just thank you to everybody for their attention. Thank you, David, as always, and to you Wendy.
Thank you so much to everybody as well. To you, Dennis, as always. And stay safe, everybody.
Thanks, Dennis, thanks, David, thanks, Judy. Thank you to all of you for joining us. Thanks a lot. Okay, take care.