HOLOCAUST FILMS KEEP COMING, DESPITE PREDICTION OF THEIR DEMISE
New Jersey Jewish Standard
Sept 18 2009
At least once a year over the last quarter century, a respected critic
will prove conclusively that films about the Holocaust and the Nazi
era have reached a saturation point and that movie and television
audiences are suffering from a terminal case of Holocaust fatigue.
Ignoring such earnest arguments, Hollywood and other moviemakers in
the United States and Europe regularly roll out new slates of films
on these topics.
This summer was no exception.
Hollywood kicked things off Aug. 21 with the opening of Quentin
Tarantino’s "Inglourious Basterds," featuring Brad Pitt, in which
American Jewish GIs terrorize the German army and almost singlehandedly
wipe out the Nazi leadership. At least five more Holocaust-related
films from around the world are set to see wider distribution in the
coming months.
A similar list, and perhaps even more impressive, could be compiled
for almost any other recent year. Going back less than 12 months,
Hollywood alone released "The Reader," "Valkyrie," "Defiance," and
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas."
So why the continuing flow, and public acceptance, of films about
the gruesome events of more than 60 years ago?
Filmmakers, distributors, and scholarly experts agree on some reasons
and to a lesser degree on others.
"The Holocaust has 6 million compelling stories, and Hollywood is
always desperate for a good story," said Meyer Gottlieb, president and
chief operating officer of Samuel Goldwyn Films and a child survivor
of the Holocaust. "It is only the media that think the public is
tired of the subject."
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founding dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and
producer of several Oscar-winning documentaries on the Holocaust,
insists that films and books about the Final Solution will never be
out of vogue.
"Why sit through something about the invasion of aliens from outer
space when the reality was so much more incredible and frightening?" he
asked.
Howard Suber, a UCLA professor considered among the top film teachers
and consultants, believes that all Holocaust films are variations on
"the world’s greatest storyline": A character is trapped in a certain
situation — will he have what it takes to get out?
He adds that "the moment a Nazi storm trooper or a swastika appear
on the screen, the audience knows a survival story is coming."
"That story always works, from baby Moses floating down the Nile and
Joseph and his brothers to ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and the TV ‘Survivor’
series," said Suber, author of "The Power of Film."
Considerably more touchy is the thesis that the prominence of Jewish
studio heads, producers, and directors in Hollywood and European
movie centers tilts their professional judgment toward films on the
extermination of 6 million fellow Jews.
According to this theory, the question is: If the founders of Hollywood
and their modern-day descendants had not been Jews, but instead had
come from Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, or Darfur, would we be watching
films about genocides in their countries?
Sharon Rivo, executive director of the National Center for Jewish
Film at Brandeis University, is convinced that personal ties and
family experiences strongly influence later professional decisions.
"At least once a week I get a pitch by someone who feels that he or
she must make a film about parents or grandparents who survived the
Holocaust," Rivo said.
"I believe there have been only two feature films about the Armenian
genocide, neither one with much impact," she said. "I would love to
see top dramatic films about the suffering and genocides of gypsies
or Rwandans, but [advocates for such films] need to be familiar with
the levers of production in this business."
Even as consummate a professional as Steven Spielberg believes that
personal background counts. Well before the release of "Schindler’s
List," he told JTA that he learned to count numbers by tracing the
scratches on the forearm of a survivor befriended by his parents.
Suber holds a strongly divergent view, asserting that ethnic or other
kinds of sentiments play no role in the tough, bottom line-obsessed
entertainment business. Forty years ago, tackling the subject in a
study on the interaction between Jewish culture and film culture,
he concluded there was none.
The Eastern European immigrants who founded the film industry went out
of their way to downplay their Jewishness, he recalled. Even today,
Suber maintained, "Hollywood Jews are secular Jews; they are American
businessmen who don’t put their race or religion first."
Whatever the reason, a new wave of Holocaust films will hit theaters
in the coming months:
Slyer and less bloody than "Inglourious Bastards" is another fantasy
about turning the tables, from Germany: Dani Levy’s "My Fuhrer:
The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler." With the Third Reich
crumbling, Hitler’s henchmen figure that only a fiery speech by the
Fuhrer on New Year’s Day 1945 can rouse the German masses and turn
the tide. But Hitler is in a funk, locked in his room, and only the
great acting coach Adolf Grunbaum, currently in a concentration camp,
can restore the dictator to his old form — and in the process extract
his own form of revenge. The German import, previously seen in this
country at a number of Jewish film festivals, is opening its first
American theatrical run in various cities.
Due in the fall is "Four Seasons Lodge," a feature documentary about
a community of Holocaust survivors who come together in New York’s
Catskill Mountains every summer to celebrate their lives.
In "Tickling Leo" (reviewed in last week’s Standard), three generations
of a Jewish family, with roots in Hungary and branches in New York
and Israel, try to connect its members to each other. The key to their
reconciliation involves the still controversial World War II "Rudolph
Kastner Affair" in which a Jewish leader bargained with Adolf Eichmann,
the "architect of the Holocaust," for the lives of 1,000 community
leaders in return for money and supplies for the Nazi war machine.
"Being Jewish in France" details the love-hate relationship between
the French and their Jewish compatriots from the anti-Semitic
Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s to the present. Excellent archival
footage strengthens the focus on the World War II era, when the
Vichy government and the French police did much of the dirty work
for the German occupiers. The three-hour documentary is now on the
film festival circuit but is worthy of wider theatrical distribution.
Denmark, which saved nearly all of its 7,500 Jews, contributes "Flame &
Citron," based on the true story of two legendary Danish resistance
fighters who sabotaged the Nazi occupiers and assassinated their
local collaborators. The film was released during the summer.
Waiting in the wings are two completed independent films on
little-known aspects of the war.
Karin Albou’s "Wedding Song," opening later this month, follows
the story of two 16-year-old Tunisian girls, one Muslim and the
other Jewish, whose lifelong friendship is tested by the six-month
Nazi occupation of their country. "About Face" is a well-researched
documentary by Steve Karras about young Jewish refugees from Germany
and Austria who fought their one-time tormentors by joining the
U.S. Army and an elite British commando unit.