Manyebook

The Making of Schindler's List

When the film Schindler's List was first released in 1993, it was acclaimed as both a motion picture masterpiece and a reaffirmation of the human spirit. It won awards for Best Picture from all major film critics' societies and eventually won the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year.

The Making of Schindler's List bears witness to the process of making a daring work of film drama about a compelling and frightening part of history.

Franciszek Palowski, a highly esteemed Polish journalist, was selected by Spielberg as a technical consultant to the production. Dr. Palowski served as an adviser in recreating the city of Krakow and the concentration camps, and most important, the relationships among Oskar Schindler, Amon Goeth, and the Jews Schindler saved from death. Survivors of the 1,200 men and women known as Schindler's Jews traveled from the four corners of the earth to participate in the acted version of the 1942 events and help convey the reality. In fact, the film was so realistic that one of the women abused by Amon Goeth nearly fainted when she met the actor Ralph Fiennes in his Nazi garb.

Another consultant for the film, Leopold Pfefferberg (who eventually emigrated to America and westernized his name to Poldek Page), first inspired Thomas Kenneally to write Schindler's story. One of the rare Jewish officers in the Polish army, Page had been captured by the German army but managed to escape. For this volume, he searched the archives and supplied most of the photographs that served as a model for recreating the past. Many of these pictures are reproduced here, along with photographs of the actors.

The Making of Schindler's List describes from beginning to end thephysical and emotional resources required of the cast to persevere through bitterly cold winters and a blazingly hot summer. On the final day of shooting, Spielberg and the people around him realized that they had participated in a profound film experience — a tribute to Schindler and a memorial to the "Schindler people" who endured.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 196
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781559724456
  • Genres
  • holocaust
  • Release date
  • 1998