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THE TOP 5 HOLOCAUST FILMS (non documentary):
view full results see how points are awarded
| Rank |
Film |
Points |
L |
#1 |
| #1 |
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970, Vittorio De Sica, Italy) |
16 |
4 |
- |
| #2 |
The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski, Poland/Germany/France/UK) |
12 |
4 |
- |
| #3 |
Seven Beauties (1975, Lina Wertmüller, Italy) |
10 |
2 |
2 |
| #4 |
The Great Dictator (1940, Charles Chaplin, USA) |
8 |
2 |
2 |
| #5 |
Au revoir les enfants (1987, Louis Malle, France) |
6 |
3 |
- |
L=How many lists each film appears on
#1=How many number one votes each film recieves
Just two weeks after setting records with sixteen lists submitted, this week's Top 5 managed only five lists - where did everyone go?
There was a rather strange like-mindedness to this week's picks though. Four out of five lists had the exact same film listed for numbers 2 AND 3, and three of those lists also had the same number 4. Thanks to that mindset, the four-time number 2 film, De Sica's final hit film, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, landed in the top spot this week. And, rather unbelievably, there was not a single vote for Spielberg's overrated white whale, Schindler's List. Overall, the tightest knit Top 5 project yet - with only 14 different films garnering votes - but let's get some more voting going on, so we can see a greater slice of the cinephiliac world.
Next week comes The Top 5 Cinematic Couples, while in two weeks, The Cinematheque is going to begin the never-ending, ever-evolving Top 10 Project. You can find out all about that at THIS PAGE.
For now, read on true believers...
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Individual lists:
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Albert H. Muth
Auteurophile
The enormity of the genocide of the Holocaust is incomprehensible even now after we have seen all the photograghs of the emaciated bodies, the cold gray gas chamber walls, and the black charred crematorium doors. The numbers become unable to be understood, seven million, eight million, ten million, there is no reference that can make them tangible, real, meaningful. And so as this horror engulfed Europe, the people who became its victims, its perpetrators, its witnesses had no better realisation of its scope, than we do today. This happened in the heart of western civilisation, where culture, art, music, literature, and science were the rules of society. The films I have chosen this week have a common thread. That is, their characters are living in disbelief and ignorance of their danger, and they avoid seeing what is happening, until they are trapped and are forced to struggle for their lives as everything they have known is destroyed around them. And they all come face to face with the horror in a cathartic moment of truth which will determine their ultimate fate.
Seven Beauties (Wertmuller) -- The protagonist/hero/villain of this story is a dandified rakish Romeo who is
the only male in a household that includes his widowed mother and seven Rubenesque sisters, whose virtue it is his duty to protect while maintaining the family honor in pre-war fascist Italy. Brilliantly portrayed by Giancarlo Giannini, Pasqualino Frafusco is too busy wooing the ladies to have a legitimate livelihood, and so supports his family as a bumbling small-time crook, who always takes the easy way out with no regard for legality or morality. After being in prison, a mental institution, and the Italian army, he is captured by the retreating Germans and put into a concentration camp for deserters. It is here that he discards all pretense of humanity and decides that whatever it takes, he will survive, and it takes his very soul. Senora Wertmuller juxtaposes scenes of hilarious slapstick worthy of Chaplin with others of the utmost physical and psychological degradation equal to any Bergman broodings. This film is quite simply an unequivocable masterpiece.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (De Sica) -- The Finzi-Continis are a respected family of Italian Jews who live inside a walled estate near Ferrara. They are the rich, the powerful, the aristocratic, the elite. As World War II begins the beautiful daughter Micol, played by Dominique Sanda, and her equally beautiful but consumptive brother Alberto,
played by Helmut Berger, are the center of a carefree coterie of young privileged intellectuals. They play games, discuss art and literature, form and dissolve alliances as the political situation becomes more ominous, and the Nazis begin to pressure Mussolini to follow the final solution for the Jews. Alberto dies before the police come to take away the family from their mansion, their illusional position of immunity being of no recourse. In a heart-wrenching scene, we see the awareness of doom come to Micol's face, as she leads her fragile, elderly grandmother down the staircase at the police
station to be boarded onto the trains which will take them to their final destination. In this his final film director Vittorio DeSica regains the brilliance of his earlier neo-realist masterpieces "The Bicycle Thief" and "Umberto D."
The Pianist (Polanski) -- Based on the true life experience of Wladyslaw Szpilman a Jewish pianist living in Warsaw when
the Nazis invaded Poland, the film tells the story of his struggles to survive the occupation and the ultimate extermination of his family and friends and all Polish Jewry. He is helped along the way by many Poles and finally by a German officer. Polanski draws upon his own experiences as a child in Poland during the war, and the character of the young boy who sells a caramel to Szpilman's family is based on himself. Polanski survived the holocaust after his mother threw him from a train bound for the death camps, and he was hidden until the war ended. Adrien Brody won the best actor Oscar for his por-
trayal of Szpilman, and Polanski received the best director award, both deservedly so. Szpilman went on to a successful career in Europe after the war, and the final scene shows him playing a concert with the Warsaw Philharmonic. I saw this film in a theatre in New York City on a Sunday morning, and as the credits rolled over this final scene, not a single person moved or left the theatre until the music ended and was greeted by applause throughout the auditorium.
Au RevoirLes Enfants (Malle) -- Set in a boys boarding school in occupied France in 1944, this film is based on a real
incident in Louis Malle's life. He befriends another student, who is one of several Jewish refugees being hidden by the priests who run the school. Eventually the truth is found out, in a most tragic way, and the Germans arrive to bring the incident to its inevitable conclusion. The harsh reality of the war is brought to the school, the priests, and the students with a shattering loss of the carefree innocence that had prevailed. Malle's most personal film, it is the highlight of a distinguished career that ended with his death in 1995.
The Night Porter (Cavani) -- Dirk Bogarde plays the role of a former SS officer working as a night porter in a Viennese hotel,
and Charlotte Rampling's character was a former concentration camp prisoner, where Bogarde was her jailor. They meet again by chance in 1957 at the hotel where Bogarde works. In flashbacks we see the sado-masochistic relationship
in which they were engaged at the camp. They are attracted to each other again and re-enact their previous depraved affair, which leads to their final dissolution and doom. In this film the main characters have survived the Holocaust, only to become victims later, scarred by the psychological damage inflicted upon them. This film is harsh, tormented, and finally without hope.
ALSO RECOMMENDED: Bent, The Diary of Anne Frank, Sophie's Choice, The Damned
I shall hereby grant A SPECIAL AWARD FOR NAIVETE AND DELUSIONAL OPTIMISM to anyone who has included "Life is Beautiful" on their list.
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Sherry Messimer
Europhile & Cinephile
1. Nowhere in Africa (2001, Link)
2. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970, De Sica)
3. The Pianist (2002, Polanski)
4. Au Revoir les Enfants (1987, Malle)
5. Le Dernier Metro (1980, Truffaut)
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J.E. Snavely
Home Theatrical Cinephile
An honest and factual film about the holocaust can not be uplifting and cheerful. It is not about reducing the murderous tragedy into small stories of human achievement, good triumphing over evil, to make us feel that something constructive came out of the Holocaust. The only thing that came out of the Holocaust was millions of innocent people murdered. What's constructive about that?
Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties) (Lina Wertmuller) -- An emotionally and psychologically destructive film, we are shown the depths that a human being will sink to in order to survive. When a human is stripped of their dignity, compassion, and guilt then instinct to survive is the driving force.
Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (Vittorio De Sica) -- The Finzi-Contini are a wealthy Jewish family in the late '30s Italy who spend their time ignorant of the world around them; living, making love, and dreaming in their own personal Eden. They feel protected by their wealth and status in the community but are in for a harsh dose of reality.
The Pianist (Roman Polanski) -- We are not spared the slauhgter in this film. We are shown the murder and debasement of the human spirit and are made to feel and react; this is a film that the viewer is not idle and unattached. If you don't cry you aren't human.
Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer) -- The world tries to convince itself that it's civilized, that the 3rd Reich was an anomaly and it couldn't possibly happen again. The Allies pass judgment upon the Nazis and come to learn that these animals and evil men are nothing more that human beings, not far removed from themselves. Following orders was no excuse and the guilty are held accountable. Justice? Not in this world...
Amen (Costa-Gavres) -- A Nazi officer tries to warn the Pope and Allies of the millions of Jews and prisoners being sent to their deaths in concentration camps. Condemns the Catholic Church with its scathing indictment of politics over humanity, that the Church is more important than the people who serve it.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Death's Head Revisited (an episode of the original Twilight Zone, season three, written by Rod Serling) -- Years after the end of WWII, a Nazi commander secretly travels back to Dachau to reminisce about the war and meets the caretaker who is the ghost of a Jew he murdered. The spirit does to take vengeance upon him (as you might expect) but instead tears down his psyche and the Nazi is finally confronted with the truth of his own actions...and goes mad. The episode ends with a question " Dachau, why do we keep it standing?" Here is Serling's closing statement: There is an ananswer to the doctor's question. All the Dachau's must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes--all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth."
HONORABLE MENTION:
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin) -- Political satire of Hitler and his anti-Semitic Nazi regime, it is both funny and tragic as Chaplin mimics the fuehrer (who can forget the scene were Chaplin, as the Dictator, does a ballet by balancing the world on his fingertips) and begs for sanity in a world soon to go mad. His last impassioned speech is truly unforgettable.
DISHONARABLE MENTIONS:
Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg) -- A cold film that is driven by stereotypes, lacking of any human soul, and his emotional manipulation is blatant and unforgivable. There are powerful cinematic moments no thanks to the director...the truth is drama enough.
La Vita e bella (Life is Beautiful) ( Roberto Benigni) -- Sometimes it isn't.
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Bill Keisling
Writer & Investigative Journalist
1. The Great Dictator
2. The Tin Drum
3. Slaughterhouse-Five
Annie Hall ("Let's go watch The Sorrow and the Pity")
MOST OVERRATED:
Schindler's List (Spielberg's visual style utterly fails top explain Schindler's change of heart)
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Kevyn Knox
Film Critic & Historian
The atrocities known collectively as The Holocaust, are not easy to sum up in just a few meager words from this author. Just the fact that these...things, took place in a supposed enlightened society - Europe in the twentieth century - makes it even more unfathomable. Makes it more unspeakable. There is nothing I can say that will make this horror flutter out of existence - its indelible overcast will forever shadow our "civilised" world. And no matter how many times we see the footage in documentaries, we will never understand why it ever happened. Why would one group of human beings do something so unspeakably horrible to another group of human beings!? Even in a film as emotionally manipulative and heartbreakingly shallow as Spielberg's incredibly overrated parlour trick, Schindler's List, you cannot help but feel this overwhelming loss - like millions of souls being ripped from humanity, in one apocalyptic thrust. This was surely our darkest hour - for those that did these horrible heinous crimes against an entire gene pool AND for those that sat back and allowed the barbarity to occur. There is no excuse ! No fucking excuse !!
There is nothing more I can say, so I shall let the films themselves speak to us all. Watch them. Learn from them. Remember them.
The Great Dictator (1940, Charles Chaplin, USA) -- At the end of the film, when the Jewish barbor, has been mistakenly identified as the not-so-disguised Fascist Dictator, Adenoid Hynkel, Chaplin leaves character and, for ten solid minutes, faces directly into the camera and addresses we the people. It is this speech, an impassioned plea for peace and humanity, given right in the midst of World war II (1940), that gives this otherwise comical film its most powerful message and its most poignant moment. Written off sometimes as being too light for the weight of such a heavy subject, it was the fact of the timing - before anyone knew of what was really going on in the concentration camps - that allows Chaplin to look so blithely at the subject of the Nazis, but it is also this timing that makes his bold humanist proclamation all that more penetrating. What tenacity, what bravura it must have taken for Chaplin - of Jewish descent himself - to so boldly lash out at the Nazi regime in the midst of what is probably the most harrowing time in modern history. It is his final speech, as Chaplin, not as the character, that makes me put this film at the top spot this week. It is the humanitarian ballsiness of Chaplin that lifts this film out of its probable fluffiness, into the daunting intensity that we, as viewers, are left with. This was also the first in a much more mature line of films from Charles Chaplin - a divining rod for his more serious sensibilities to come.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970, Vittorio De Sica, Italia) -- Italian Neo-Realist master, Vittorio De Sica, made his comeback - and his near-coda - with this film of two Jewish families in the burgeoning Fascist state of Italy, in the midst of World war II. Both an emotionally powerful film and an artistic canvas of love, hate, beauty, fear, anger, despair, hope and hopelessness. De Sica, who is more known for his minimilistic neo-realism of his early career, here portrays these horrifying events as pure aestheticly-riddled grand movie making.
The Pianist (2002, Roman Polanski, Poland/Germany/France/UK) -- This film is all about one of the most electrically charged performances of, well, of all-time I am not afraid to say. Adrian Brody as the real life character of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist, trying to survive a Nazi-infested Poland after the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. Harrowing and tormentuous in his portrayal of this miracle man, who would eventually survive the death camps of World war II. The film's tagline, although possibly construed as somewhat meretricious, puts Szpilman's plight right up front. "Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece". Simply put, if you are not brought to tears, you are not human.
Au revoir les enfants (1987, Louis Malle, France) -- This placid and escelatingly tense drama from Louis Malle - a filmmaker I have always been rather indifferent to - is easily his grandest piece. Quiet and unassuming at first glance, this tale - taken from Malle's own childhood - is the story of a Catholic school for boys in occupied France, and several Jewish children who had been hidden out there. Hidden there until the tragic ending. The film is dedicated to Malle's three friends who would eventually all die in Auschwitz.
And the following three films fall into a tie for fifth place:
Sophie's Choice
Europa, Europa
The Last Metro
I give out no Special Jury Awards this week, for I can find no other subjected film worthy of inclusion upon my list. I have, unfortunately, never had the pleasure (or pain) of seeing any of the following films: Seven Beauties, The Night Porter, Judgement at Nurenburg or The Diary of Anne Frank. I also have no desire to place Schindler's List into a group of films that are obviously so superior to its own unreasonable self-hoisted platitudes. A film that has no sensibilities toward the actions of its characters and no soul to coincide with its occasional passionate moments. And while I am at it, i must make mention of that cinematic ogre known as Life is Beautiful - a film that does much much much more damage than benefit. If anything, this dubiously praised steaming shit-pile of a movie - inconcievably nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1998 - is an utter insult to the memories of all those that died in the camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau and the others. Begnini makes fools out of their memories. With all that said, we now end this week in silence.
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*points are given as follows: for numbered lists, first place recieves 5 points, second place recieves 4, third place 3, fourth place 2 and fifth place gets 1 point; for unumbered lists, each film will recieve 3 points; total points are then tallied up and a comprehensive Top 5 list is created
The Next Topic is:
Name The Top 5 Cinematic Couples
e-mail me at
kevynknox@thecinematheque.com
with your picks for week #10,
no later than 6pm on Sunday, August 28, 2005.
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