MovieChat Forums > Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust (2007) Discussion > Films I'd have liked to have seen discu...

Films I'd have liked to have seen discussed

posted 13 years ago by Tin Man-5
8 replies | jump to latest

A very thorough, recommended documentary on the subject of the holocaust on film; I thought it was informative and moving. But I couldn't help but think that there were a few films missing in their discussion.

"Shoah," for example, didn't even come up in the discussion. That devastating, 9-hour film is the most complete chronicle of the holocaust ever committed to film. Why it didn't come up is inexplicable.

"Escape from Sobibor," which I think is the best of all the made-for-TV holocaust films. Absolutely devastating film; to leave it out of their discussion on the television response seems glaring.

This might seem like an unlikely example, but "Frankenstein 1970" (actually made in 1958) is an interesting early example of Hollywood attempting to interpret Nazi atrocities in a conventional setting. Doctor Frankenstein is this is a Holocaust survivor driven to madness by his captors; memories of his tortures literally inform the entire film. By no means a good film, but this element alone makes it an important entry in the B-movie incorporating the Holocaust as subject matter--something they go over in this documentary.

I might be splitting hairs here, but at the very least, the lack of "Shoah" is stupefying.

[–] Danusha_Goska 13 years ago

Look again at the title. It is HOLLYWOOD and the Holocaust. Not independent French producers and the Holocaust.

[–] Tin Man-5 12 years ago

Well, they covered a lot of independent foreign films from around the world.

[–] gilliamjf 11 years ago

The compilation of Holocaust drama clips was well ordered from the 1930s until 2004 (the date of the doc).

At the end of the film, I thought too much praise was given to Schindler's List, especially when compared to its 'successor' The Pianist.

To me, The Pianist was a more powerful film because it didn't have to resort to so much graphic violence to give the viewer a even more factual and realistic account of the terror the protagonist experienced.

Almost every important scene in Schindler's List was analyzed, while only a 10 second clip was The Pianist was shown without any context.

BTW, Robert Stack was hawt as the 21 year old supporting actor in the brief clip of The Mortal Storm (1940). Wish they had shown more of him!

[–] lk224779 11 years ago

a film covering a topic such as this cannot possibly cover all the films that are from Hollywood about the Holocaust, there are just too many, but I think it does a very good job

[–] rudykawa 10 years ago

I firstly thought of Shoah also, and obviously Nuit et brouillard. But as someone said I remembered it was a documentary about Hollywood and their jew Moguls in this period of history.
But then I remembered a very good documentary also called Hotel Terminus that was also not from hollywood but did receive an Academy Award. This was also not mentioned and could've been.

But for certain still the best movies/documentaries about this period is still the european ones, for kind of obvious reasons.

[–] Sputnoidal 10 years ago

This documentary was intentionally US / Hollywood-centric so a lot of films were left out that should have been included. I think it might have been interesting to compare the European films about the Holocaust to Hollywood's output, but that might be a whole other documentary. There are a whole string of movies that were made during the Cold War that are now becoming available. The films of Polish director Andrzej Wajda are particularly interesting and different.

[–] Sputnoidal 10 years ago

One other film (S) I thought about was Apt Pupil, two versions - one that never made it to the screen in 1987 and one that did with Ian McKellan in 1998. Based on a Stepehn King novella about a boy who discovers his neighbor is a war criminal in hiding and he decides to blackmail him - not for money - but by making him tell him everything about the camps, "especially the gooshy parts" The 1987 version starred Ricky Schroeder as the boy and ran out of funding, allegedly, 10 weeks into production. I say "allegedly" because there were rumors circulating around that time that the film had been yanked due to discomfort with its content.

That the original and 1998 versions didn't make it into Imaginary Witness might be an indication of an uncomfortable truth for Hollywood: That the popularity for American audiences of Holocaust material on-screen is at least in part due to a morbid curiosity and fascination with WWII and the Holocaust. I think Stephen King recognized that.

[–] ebright99 7 years ago

The worst omission in this doc is Orson Welles in The Stranger. This doc is actually wrong when it says the death camp liberation footage was quickly swept away and not shown. It's shown in the Welles film. And that was 1946!!!!