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Schindler’s Ark. by Australian author Thomas Keneally Published in 1982 after extensive research. Winner of the 1982 Booker Prize for Fiction
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Schindler’s Ark by Australian author Thomas Keneally Published in 1982 after extensive research. Winner of the 1982 Booker Prize for Fiction Steven Spielberg read Keneally's fact-based novel during the filming of ET, but it was ten years before he made his vision of a film about the Holocaust a reality.
Background for Schindler’s Ark • In October 1980, author Thomas Keneally was on his way back to Australia after a book signing when he stopped en route to the airport to buy a new briefcase in a Beverly Hills luggage shop owned by Pfferberg who had been one of the 1200 saved by Schindler. • Pfefferberg persuaded him to go to the back room where the shopkeeper kept two cabinets filled with documents he had collected. • Pfefferberg - who had told his story to every writer and producer who ever came into his store - eventually wore down Keneally's reluctance, and the writer chose to make the story into his next book.
Schindler-Pfefferberg Connection Poldek Pfefferberg was born in 1913 in Krakow, Poland. He attended high school in Krakow and earned a master’s degree in philosophy and physical education from Krakow University. He taught high school in Krakow until 1939 when the Germans closed all Jewish schools. Pfefferberg fought in the Polish Army against the Nazis with the rank of lieutenant and was wounded and arrested. He escaped and went to his mother's house in Krakow. One day, in November 1939, a man knocked on the door, and Pfefferberg thought it was the Gestapo. It wasn't. It was Oscar Schindler, a Sudeten-German businessman who had purchased an enamelware factory that had been confiscated from Jews. Schindler had come to ask Pfefferberg`s mother, an interior designer, to redecorate his new apartment."I was hiding in the next room", Pfefferberg later said, "but listening to Schindler, I knew he wasn't Gestapo. Even then I could tell he was a good man. I began to talk to him and we became friends."Poldek Pfefferberg was saved - the rest of his family was not as lucky - almost 100 perished including his parents, sister and brother-in-law.
Director Steven Spielberg • Born Dec. 18, 1947, in Cincinnati, Ohio. • Raised by Jewish parents in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. • Studied English at California State University. • His grades were not good enough to get him into film school, he landed a job at Universal Studios lot. He started out directing TV shows, and eventually moved to films. .
By age 30, Spielberg had directed the two highest grossing movies of all times: Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). • He is one of the most popular and prolific directors in history, with films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). • Schindler's List expanded Spielberg's reputation from a king of high-budget action films into a director capable of creating moving human drama.
Important Characters Ben Kingsley as Liam Neeson Itzak Stern as Schindler Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth
Spielberg’s intentions for the film: 1. Educate people about the Holocaust. 2. Silence those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened. 3. Make sure the people never forget so history is not repeated.
Spielberg expected that the film’s main appeal would be to the school market, but Schindler’s List was a hit in theaters (50 million saw the film in theaters, another 65 million during a special airing on national television). - Best Picture - Best Director - Best Art Direction - Best Cinematography - Best Film Editing - Best Music (Original Score) - Best Writing ( Screenplay based on material previously produced or published)
Why black and white? • Appropriate to the WWII era. • Allows sparing use of color to emphasize certain scenes. • Film noir styles heightens violence, highlights theme of good vs. evil. • Schindler’s face is often hidden in shadow, and becomes more open as he leaves his selfish motives behind.
Parallel editing, or crosscutting, is a cinematic convention in which two or more concurrent scenes are interwoven with each other. • Illustrates the contrast between the easy life of the Nazis and the desperation of the Jews. Also, we see the bitter irony in how one group is gaining (“It couldn’t possibly be better.”) as the other loses (“How could it possibly be worse?”).
Two examples: • Schindler moves into the Nussbaums’ apt. as they move into the ghetto. • Schindler’s birthday party, a wedding in the camp and Amon Goethe’s brutal beating of Helen Hirsch.
Trivia • Director Steven Speilberg was unable to get permission to film inside Auschwitz, so the scenes of the death camp were actually filmed outside the gates on a set constructed in a mirror image of the real location on the other side. • Co-producer Branko Lustig plays the nightclub maître d' in Schindler's first scene. Lustig is an Auschwitz survivor and has produced other movies about the Holocaust • The producer Branko Lustig was a real life holocaust survivor of Auschwitz, having been imprisoned there as a boy. Accepting his Oscar, he recited his serial number A3317. • To gather costumes for 20,000 extras, the costume designer took out advertisements seeking clothes. As economic conditions were poor in Poland, many people were eager to sell clothing they still owned from the 1930s and '40s. • The original missing list of Schindler's Jews was found in a suitcase together with his written legacy hidden in the attic of Schindler's flat in Hildesheim in 1999. Schindler stayed there during the last few months before his death in 1974.
The Krakow ghetto "liquidation" scene was only a page of action in the script, but Steven Spielberg turned it into 20 pages and 20 minutes of screen action "based on living witness testimony". For example, the scene in which the young man escapes capture by German soldiers by telling them he was ordered to clear the luggage from the street was taken directly from a survivor's story. • For the epilogue scene, all actors are required to accompany the original Schindlerjuden they portrayed in the movie in pairs (actor and the Jew they portrayed carrying and placing a pebble on the grave). This actually explains why Liam Neeson was the one placing the flowers on the stone before the end credits roll in. • There is a Jewish tradition that when one visits a grave, one leaves a small stone on the marker as a sign of respect. This is why the cast and the Schindlerjuden cover Schindler's grave with stones at the end of the movie. • The girl in the red dress was a real girl named Roma Ligocka. Unlike her film counterpart, she survived the war, and wrote a memoir titled "The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir". • Helen Hirsch is based on Helen Jonas (nee Sternlicht), whose story in shown in the documentary Inheritance
