Schindler's List

Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) is a historical drama about Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazi Party who saved more than one thousand Jews during the Holocaust. Based on Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark, the film follows Schindler’s arrival in German-occupied Kraków in 1939, where he seeks profit by acquiring an enamelware factory. He recruits Jewish workers from the ghetto, initially because they are cheaper labor, with assistance from his Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern. As Nazi persecution intensifies, Schindler witnesses the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto and becomes increasingly determined to protect his employees. Ralph Fiennes plays Amon Göth, the brutal commandant of the Płaszów forced-labor camp, whose arbitrary shootings and cruelty embody the terror surrounding Schindler’s factory. Liam Neeson portrays Schindler, while Ben Kingsley plays Stern. The screenplay was written by Steven Zaillian, adapting Keneally’s book and drawing on survivor testimony and historical research. Shot largely in black and white, the film was photographed by Janusz Kamiński, whose work helped give it a documentary-like visual texture. Spielberg used color sparingly, most famously for a young girl in a red coat seen during the ghetto liquidation; later, Schindler notices the coat among bodies being moved after mass murder. The image marks a turning point in his moral awakening. Schindler eventually persuades Nazi officials to let him move his workers to a new factory in Brünnlitz, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Stern and others compile a list of workers designated for transfer, a document that becomes central to the film’s title and its story of survival. The women are mistakenly sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler secures their release. In Brünnlitz, he spends his fortune bribing officials and keeping the factory operating without producing usable munitions until Germany’s defeat. Released by Universal Pictures, Schindler’s List earned seven Academy Awards from twelve nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg. It also won Oscars for Zaillian’s adapted screenplay, Kamiński’s cinematography, John Williams’s score, editing, art direction, and sound. The National Film Registry selected it for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2004. Its closing scene was filmed at Schindler’s grave on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, where surviving Schindlerjuden and actors portraying them place stones in accordance with Jewish custom. The final title card states that Schindler’s actions saved more than 1,100 Jewish lives, and that their descendants numbered more than 6,000 people.