Schindler’s List

Released: November 30, 1993

Studio: Universal Pictures

Genre: war epic/history

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 96.90 Worldwide: 322.10

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 208.10 Worldwide: 696.20

Directing: Steven Spielberg

Screenwriting: Steven Zaillian

Starring: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes

Review:

“Who the hell would’ve thought that immature, moneybags director Steven Spielberg would make a movie that is (a) a serious, grown-up film, and (b) the best movie made by Hollywood in years?” ^ML “As in his earlier work, there’s a sense of wonder at the inexplicable, but it’s no longer childlike.” ^T95 This is his “greatest dramatic, black and white masterpiece.” ^FS “Filmed almost entirely on location in Poland…with a pace to match the most frenzied Spielberg works, this looks and feels like nothing Hollywood has ever made before.” ^LM “As painful as it is powerful,” ^TV this is “Spielberg’s most intense and personal film to date.” ^LM

The movie is a “staggering adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s best-seller” ^LM about Oskar Schindler (Neeson), the real-life, opportunistic, German Catholic industrialist. He “initially flourished by sucking up to the Nazis” ^LM and “employing cheap labor from Polish Jews in his Cracow cookware factory.” ^FS He eventually went broke, but by giving them jobs, he saved “over 1,000 Jews from the senseless, brutal extermination in Auschwitz.” ^FS

In addition to Neeson’s “towering” ^LM performance as Schindler, Kingsley is “superb as his Jewish accountant (and conscience)” ^LM and Fiennes, who portrays Amon Goeth, is “the hideous, disturbing evil personified” ^FS “odious Nazi commandant.” ^LM

“The elastic editing and grainy camerawork lend an immediacy as surprising as the shockingly matter-of-fact depiction of violence and casual killing.” ^T95 “At times the film becomes a scream of horror at the inhumanity it recalls and recreates, and the b/w images never become aesthetically sanitized. True, the Jews are huddled, victimized masses. True, too, that Spielberg finally relents and tries to ‘explain’ Schindler so that the last hour becomes steadily more simplistic and sentimental. Otherwise, however, it’s a noble achievement, and essential viewing.” ^T95