FrontPage | Holocaust and Jewish-Themed Films Not on DVD: The Endangered Species List

---

The diffusion of consumer technologies specifically geared for home entertainment has opened new frontiers for the study of how film and television represents the Holocaust and other themes central to the Jewish experience.  Viewing these films were once restricted to television re-broadcasts, the theatrical revival house, or a visit to a film and television archive.  Today, many of these titles are now available in new and portable formats accessible to much wider audiences.  This availability not only has promised new possibilities of greater public literacy with classic representations of Jewish ethnicity, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust.  It also has revolutionized the very study of these topics, where theaters no longer function as high temples for encountering these images, and scholars and critics no longer serve as its high priests and priestesses of interpretation for them.  At the same time, however, these technologies come with new trade-offs in consistency and permanence.  Which titles will survive the next migration to a new consumer technology format?  Which will end up relegated to the cultural dustheap, all for lack of a monetized target audience?   And which will languish in presentist cultural obscurity, despite their importance to or popularity with historical audiences.  A paradox thus exists for studying the Holocaust and representations central to the Jewish experience.  As technology democratizes the study of these representations, economics and technological obsolescence establish new regimes with their own restrictions and barriers, imposing new arbitrary and ahistorical limits upon cultural literacy and public memory.

 

This paper grows out of a list originally developed for an interview I gave with Moment Magazine in 2009 as part of a special issue devoted to great Jewish films.  What struck me then, as now, was how many historically important films depicting Jews, Jewish themes, and the Holocaust are inconsistently available, or simply unavailable, all because some of these titles did not survive the cut to the next generation of consumer technology.  Some of these titles, or clips from some of them, may make fleeting appearances on sites like YouTube.  But not having consistent access to these titles in their entirety ultimately diminishes our literacy.  Our ability to make informed judgments about what comprises a Holocaust and/or Jewish film depends not just on what is available today, but how what was available yesterday would have meaning for those audiences then.  For Moment, I made a strategic decision to list five films that at the time were commercially unavailable on DVD.  Those films were Birthplace (New Yorker, 1992); The Search (MGM, 1948); Little Man, What Now? (MGM, 1934); Playing for Time (CBS, 1980); and The Last Stage (Times, 1948).  I'm happier to report that since the appearance of this list, though I doubt because of it, a few of these titles now are available in a current format.  The questions raised above, however, persist.  After DVDs become obsolete, which films will survive the transition to the next technological format?   Will streaming, downloading, bootleg DVDs, accessed either legally or illegally, adequately allow audiences  to make informed determinations regarding which "Jewish" films are the great ones?  Who or what will determine the choices for audiences?   In response to these questions, I began to develop an "endangered species list" of films I believed important enough for audiences to recall, despite their relative unavailability in an accessible format.

 

This expanded list, included in the appendix, includes a broader range of films representing theatrical as well as non-theatrical titles that are unavailable on a consistent basis.  It also represents a wider range of genres, including more television programs, short subjects, educational films, and even unused footage.  I quickly realized that the amorphous body of both newly available titles as well as forgotten ones waiting for rediscovery would preclude any one person from ever producing the definitive inventory of all titles related to Jewish or Holocaust film.  Because I believe having some kind of inventory of Jewish and Holocaust-themed films is better than having no list at all, I created a collaborative wiki for ongoing communication, participation, and sharing of information around this topic: jewishfilm.pbworks.com.  Here, academics and popular audiences can help cooperatively maintain lists of films they believe important enough to deserve a commercial release.  And because no one person can ever develop an exhaustive inventory, crowdsourcing is a better model to compile these kinds of lists and build a community around the study of this important topic.

 

As important as maintaining this amorphous catalogue of titles is, though, if the study of Jewish and Holocaust films will ever mature into a full-fledged discipline, we ultimately must broaden the current established practice beyond only inventorying and re-inventorying the canon of Jewish and Holocaust films.  To illustrate the need for a broader view of these films, consider this deceptively simple question.  What is a Jewish or a Holocaust film?  The answers are not so simple.  Does this body of films include only features which depict Jewish characters?  Films which overtly depict the Holocaust?  What about non-theatrical titles screened only in churches, schools, and the military?  Films not necessarily Jewish, but specifically marketed to Jewish audiences, or films popular with these audiences?  Films widely understood by audiences to be about Nazi anti-Semitism, but with overt reference to it?  Or films made by Jewish creative personnel, but without overt depictions of Jewish characters or themes?

 

Because this basic question - what is a Holocaust or Jewish film? - engenders such varied and protean responses, we must move beyond only cataloguing these films and consider a multi-faceted approach to the topic.  This approach must account for moviegoing and television watching in all of its dimensions.  More than viewing images of Jews or the Holocaust, it involves overlapping methods of textual analysis, production history, and audience reception.  I propose a normative framework that seeks not only to expand the canon of "usual suspects," but that also seeks to expand our definitions of what studying moviegoing and television viewing involve.  For each mediated text, these norms include evaluating each film on the basis of the following criteria:

 

• Significance of artistic achievement
• Facticity and authenticity of representation
• Influence upon subsequent films and genres
• Notable conditions of production, such as on-location shooting or use of survivor re-enactments
• Critical reception at the time of release
• Influence upon audiences and subsequent audience expectations regarding how to represent Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust 

 

Seeking to establish some norms for what constitutes a Holocaust- or Jewish-themed film does not necessarily impose a rigid template upon the discussion.  Rather, establishing a transparent set of ground rules for discussing the impact and qualities of these films potentially opens new possibilities for which films and what aspects of them merit discussion.  The somewhat conventional manner of talking about a Holocaust film can uncritically rely upon a relatively limited canon established mostly through popular reviews or auteurist scholarship.  Yet these discussions today sometimes seem as unaware of the material forces establishing that canon as it is of the economic and technological forces determining which films from that canon become available for discussion.  If we can discuss artistic achievement on a par with facticity and authenticity, for example, we can appreciate a relatively low-budget film such as The Last Stop (Times, 1948), shot on location at Auschwitz by a team of female survivors,  when placed alongside a Hollywood blockbuster like Schindler's List (Universal, 1992).  Perhaps the Japanese anime version of The Diary of Anne Frank deserves at least as much consideration as the 1959 filmization of the Goodrich and Hackett play, even though Anne No Nikki (BAC, 1995) remains commercially unavailable in the U.S.

 

If some discussions regarding Holocaust- and Jewish-themed films involve more than considering what makes these titles "great masterpieces," others alternatively focus upon decidedly mimetic and ethical questions regarding how well these mediated representations performed.  Were they "realistic?"  Do they engage in stereotypes?  Do they, in Lawrence Langer's words, "universalize" the Holocaust into a series of digestible yet banal lessons for us to learn (8-10)?  Or worse, do they trivialize the Holocaust as a form of mere entertainment?  Just as questions of aesthetic value and canon inclusion have no permanent resolution, questions of mimesis and representational ethics are impermanent because our norms and conventions for what constitutes a "realistic" or "ethical" treatment also remain in flux.  Upon release, Holocaust "comedies" routinely generated controversy over tastelessness, but films such as To Be Or Not to Be (United Artists, 1940) to The Producers (AVCO, 1967) to Life Is Beautiful (1997; Miramax, 1998) all eventually merited a place in the canon of Holocaust-themed films, and in some cases even Jewish-themed ones.

 

While both aesthetic and mimetic approaches to these films will and should continue to discuss and debate the merits of individual films, these discussions should not operate to the exclusion of a more systematic approach to considering how these films represent Holocaust and Jewishness, or how actual audiences might have perceived these representations.  Tastes change; standards of realism shift according to conventions of the time; and methods of evaluating a film, whether by director, genre, or individual film, all go in and out of style.  If the study of Holocaust and Jewish films is to maintain credibility, it must be able to historicize and account for these shifts, rather than simply perpetuate or naturalize them.

 

In addition to moving beyond the established practice of attempting to inventory these films, we also must move beyond what I call the "reflection paradigm."  Annette Insdorf's groundbreaking Indelible Shadows offers a telling example of just how difficult it is to define a Holocaust film.  The films included in her survey are not Holocaust films, but films that stand in relation to the Holocaust.  Defining the Holocaust film as that which "illuminates, distorts, confronts, or reduces the Holocaust," Insdorf explores this relationship thematically, in terms of "cinematic language," "narrative strategies," depictions of Nazi atrocity, and those films that shape "documentary material through a personal voice" (xvi).  Maintaining this distinction between the totality of an event which can never submit fully to representation and the representation itself has a long and respected tradition which we should continue to observe.  But how does this tradition help us to make sense of a science fiction action adventure film like X-Men (20th Century-Fox, 2000), with its opening explicitly set in a Nazi death camp?  As Laurie Baron has noted, some critical responses concluded that this was yet another trivialization of the Holocaust.  As Baron's essay argues, however, the film functions on multiple levels, appealing to a teenage male audience while simultaneously reflecting allegorical connections between the Jewish-American experience and dialectical anxieties over state-sanctioned discrimination in both the U.S. as well as in Nazi Germany.  Baron notes that that the comic books on which the film is based are even more explicit in making these connections (45-46).  Clearly no one looks to X-Men for an accurate depiction of a concentration camp.  But can we so easily dispense with its allegory or its complex networks of historical meaning simply because it comes from a comic book and appears to trivialize the Holocaust in ways that higher brow documentary and fiction don't?

 

The identity politics of what constitutes a Jewish film move us even further from a clear answer to this deceptively simple question.  Hollywood's Image of the Jew, a 1982 pioneering study of representations of Jews in American film, made a similar argument to Insdorf: film exists in relation to the American Jewish experience rather than embodying some part of that experience.  To understand Jewish film, one had to understand "how Jews had been portrayed in American films."  By doing so, one "could say something about Jews as well as about Americans" (xviii).  Two years after the publication of Friedman's book, Patricia Erens proposed a more systematic genre-oriented framework to examine representations of Jews in American cinema.  Like Friedman, she conceived of film narratives as "incorporating Jewish elements" that "relate to American society in general and to the American-Jewish community in particular."  And like Friedman, she argued that these films reflect something of "actual experiences and latent attitudes" both toward and among the Jewish community (xi).

 

Insdorf, Friedman and Erens all staked out an important and necessary distinction at a time when film studies still had to achieve respect as an academic discipline: the cinematic representation is not interchangeable with the thing represented.  Furthermore, being able to distinguish between cinematic depictions and what those depictions represent can yield greater insight into protean subjects like the Holocaust or Jewish identity.  And while these pioneering works have their limitations, as any work has, they helped set a paradigm for analyzing film as reflection.  This essay thus is not so much a critique of that paradigm, as much of an attempt rethink a different set of possibilities outside the reflection paradigm.  The Life of Emile Zola (Warner Bros., 1937) illustrates the necessity of moving outside of this paradigm.  Does it constitute a Jewish film?  An anti-Nazi one?  An example of how Hollywood treated anti-Semitism?  Save for a single fleeting close-up of the word "Jew" appearing in a shot, the film makes no explicit reference to Zola's involvement in combatting anti-Semitism during the infamous Dreyfus Affair.  Yet in depicting an event that audiences absolutely would have recognized as being about the infamous Dreyfus affair, Warner Bros. actively marketed the film to Jewish audiences and encouraged them to draw the topical and relevant parallels to contemporary Europe.  The problem is not that there is a "reflection" paradigm.  The problem is that this dominant paradigm cannot fully account for what The Life of Emile Zola actually did with audiences in 1937.  And yet for Holocaust- and Jewish-themed films, the reflection paradigm operates largely to the exclusion of other production- or audience-oriented paradigms that might better explain what audiences did with films like The Life of Emile Zola.

 

The remainder of this paper explores how new approaches can move beyond the reflection paradigm and begin to address a range of lesser-known and in some cases unavailable titles spanning narrative, non-fiction, short subject, non-theatrical, and even experimental films addressing the Jewish experience and/or the Holocaust.  Again, the essay has not conducted exhaustive research on these films, and the selections are purely arbitrary.  However, the case studies briefly outlined here are meant in the spirit of suggesting a new direction for research on Holocaust and Jewish-themed films to proceed, and thus represent the beginnings of a more systematic three-part method that considers the text, production history, and reception, all applicable to almost any film whether publicly available or not.

 

Suppose one were to write about film and anti-Semitism.  Having published a book on Hollywood and anti-Semitism, I have a deeper appreciation of what others thought the book should have been about.  In the book I wrote, I made the conscious decision not to cast the discussion as one focused on films depicting anti-Semitism, or as one charging Hollywood films with anti-Semitism.  Indeed, some reviewers thought these were the books I should have authored.  Instead, I chose to discuss how various individuals and organizations directed anti-Semitism toward Hollywood, and how the industry chose to respond, and in some cases not respond, to these attacks.

 

Three examples the endangered species list - Little Man, What Now? (Universal, 1934), Professor Mamlock (Amkino, 1938), and outtakes from The Great Dictator (United Artists, 1940) - all reveal the necessity for scholars to think beyond the films themselves when considering a broader popular context for anti-Semitism in American life.  The Great Dictator, of course, is widely available on DVD, but archival research has suggested the possibility of additional footage set in a concentration camp.  If such footage still exists, it would prove invaluable to the study of popular perceptions of Nazi concentration camps before Liberation.

 

Within a relatively short timespan, each of these films became a cultural index for the varying and shifting ways in which audiences could imagine Hollywood in relation to anti-Semitism.  As films, each exists differently in relation to its depiction or lack of overt depiction of anti-Semitism.  Little Man, What Now? was one of the first Hollywood films to depict social conditions in Germany after the Nazis came to power, although it neither references Nazism nor anti-Semitism.  A Soviet film, Professor Mamlock achieved notoriety as one of the first films American audiences saw to directly confront Nazi anti-Semitism.  And The Great Dictator is arguably one of the most forthright Hollywood films ever made to confront Nazi anti-Semitism.

 

Little Man, What Now? (Universal, 1934) has generated some disagreement among film historians as to whether it even constitutes an anti-Nazi film.  Part of the problem, of course, is that very few people have actually seen the film.  As Richard Koszarski noted back in 1969, the film "had the reputation of being anti-Nazi, but is really just anti-politics" (36).  Some of the confusion may stem from Little Man being based on a novel that did portray both Nazism and German anti-Semitism.  Its story of two newlyweds struggling to survive amid harsh conditions in Germany after World War I also bears similarity to an MGM cycle of films set in Germany, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Margaret Sullavan.  The cycle included the later Three Comrades (1938) and The Mortal Storm (1940), and although The Mortal Storm made explicit reference only to "non-Aryans," the cycle moved progressively toward a more pointed critique of Nazi anti-Semitism as events in Europe moved closer to World War II.

 

Even before Borzage's later MGM films, however, critical reception already had established Little Man as a topical film based on a novel that one commentator "had long thought was a story about the career of either Hitler or Dollfuss" (Watts).  In considering how most screen versions of novels disappoint, critic Howard Barnes singled out the screen adaptation of Hans Fallada's novel as an exemplar, since it scarcely captured the book's "ominous accompaniment of suffering and doom that must be familiar to any one  who visited central Europe during the latter part of the bitter post-war period" (Barnes).  As The Los Angeles Times observed, the film is "a post-war, deep depression story, with a German background" where two people survive amid "a topsy-turvy sphere, where Communism is pitted against militarism" (Schallert).  These brief examples of a film believed to be anti-Nazi but that wasn't explicitly so indicate the need not just to have the actual film at hand for close viewing and analysis, but also indicate the need to understand how the film's adaptation from an acclaimed literary text primed critics to interpret the film as being anti-Nazi.

 

A similar pre-existing context existed for Professor Mamlock.  As I've argued in another essay on anti-Nazi films exhibited in the U.S., American audiences in 1938 would have been well-versed, if not with its basic story, then certainly with the controversy the Soviet film engendered.  As early as 1933, the New York Times reported that a group called the Theatre Union would perform a version of the Friedrich Wolf play on which the later film was based, entitled simply Mamlock (NYT).  By 1937, the Jewish Unit of the Works Progress Administration Federal Theatre Project had produced another version of the play bearing the same name as the film (NYT).  The play's narrative and Wolf's biography were closely intertwined.  Mamlock, like Wolf, was a doctor and veteran of World War I.  After the Nazis came to power, both were persecuted, with the real-life Wolf emigrating to Moscow to write Mamlock.  Unlike Wolf, who was active in the Communist Party, the fictional Mamlock began the play largely assimilated, patriotic, anti-Communist, and unconcerned with the rise of Nazism.  Only once the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of 1935 removed Mamlock from his position as chief surgeon at a university hospital, stripped him of his German citizenship, and justified attacks targeting his own children did he realize the full extent of the Nazi threat, but by then, it was too late.

 

By 1938, audiences came to recognize the film version of Professor Mamlock as a specific indictment of anti-Semitism.  In the advertisement for the premiere for the film, an image of a man appeared in a white coat resembling a straightjacket with the word JUDE scrawled across his chest.  Two brownshirt officers flank him.  The tagline for the film read "a crushing indictment of Nazi terror" (NYT).  In fact, reviews of both the film and the play suggested that audiences already would be familiar not only with the basic story, but with a set of taste politics measuring what the film could and could not do in comparison to Hollywood.  The Russian film significantly addressed "a topic which Hollywood, with its fear of jeopardizing foreign markets, has not dared to touch" (Nugent).  In an interview with the Times, Edward G. Robinson claimed that he "would give my teeth to do an American version of Professor Mamlock" (Crowther).  At the same time, though, Brooks Atkinson's review of the Federal Theatre's production of the play observed that even by 1937 "in one way or another," the play's "fiendish story has been told... several times," and that "the whole subject of the Nazi persecution of the Jews needs something more penetrating" (Atkinson).  Similarly, film reviewer Frank S. Nugent observed that the Soviet production said "nothing new about Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany," and confessed to "a feeling of resentment" over the film's conflation of Jewish and Communist suffering, and "the simplification of a problem which is not limited to politics but is deeply rooted as well in religious, racial, and economic soil" (Nugent).  However much the actual film fell short in its lack of originality, and its conflation of Jewish with Communist suffering, the film engendered both controversy and status, becoming a cause celebre for those advocating First Amendment protections for the film industry.  By 1939, the Columbia Law Review noted how Mamlock had "received much publicity" for numerous instances where public and journalistic pressure had forced censorship boards in Ohio and Chicago to reverse initial exhibition bans that previously had cited ostensible concerns for public safety and fears of rioting.

 

Today, the unavailability of a film like Professor Mamlock belies the film's importance to audiences then.  For many American filmgoers, the foreign film served as their first encounter with cinematic depictions of Nazi anti-Semitism.  Without being conversant with films like Mamlock today, we also lose sight of how important these films were as lightning rods for debates over film censorship and propaganda then.  Many at the time, in turn, saw these debates as stymying more forthright depictions of Nazi anti-Semitism in Hollywood film.

 

Arguably one of the most forthright anti-Nazi films Hollywood made before World War II, The Great Dictator (United Artists, 1940) also was one of the few American films during this period to depict overly Nazi anti-Semitism.  While a great deal of scholarship has discussed the film in terms of its black humor and anti-fascist satire, less scholarly attention has focused on the film's depiction of the concentration camp.  Production materials reveal that original conceptions of the film devoted far more narrative attention to the concentration camp than the three short scenes depicting the camp in the release print would suggest.

 

In another essay, I discussed how various script notes and drafts suggested an evolving strategy in which slapstick comedy played a more pronounced role in negotiating the seriousness of Nazi anti-Semitism.  Early drafts of the script made much more extensive use of sight gags, physical, and potty humor in the camp.  A rough note from perhaps 1938 or 1939 proposed having the Jewish barber leave his hand up after a sieg heil salute with a request to use the bathroom.  Such gags remained consistent with the Little Tramp persona, intentionally or unintentionally undermining brutish authority, but with escalating consequences - in this case solitary confinement.  The final version of the film ultimately shifts its ridicule of the fascist state, setting that ridicule outside the confines of the camp and within that state's own pompous trappings.

 

Another draft of the script from late October 1938 makes reference to all of "the very best people" being sent to concentration camps.  Consistent with Chaplin's Little Tramp persona, in the words of the script "the Little Jew hangs on to his optimism."  With the procession of wildlife that occurs when he pats his bed, the lightheartedness of such gags seems striking given more modern depictions of the camps.  The same script from October 1938 later shows acts of what it calls "both conscious and unconscious sabotage."  The act of humiliating the humiliators through comic routines remains a familiar motif in these early drafts.  As this example shows, these acts of resistance include slapstick gags such as slapping storm troopers in the face with a dirty mop, or breaking a basket of eggs when giving the Fascist salute.

 

While unused footage of the concentration camp scenes in The Great Dictator may or may not exist, the use of production materials to better understand how these depictions emerged as an overall process remains vital to our understanding, not just of that film, but to how films generally depicted Nazi anti-Semitism during that time.  Similarly, scholars today would do well to understand how Hollywood depicted Nazi anti-Semitism then by gaining a better understanding of the role that foreign film played during this period, and how American audiences might have had certain expectations for which films could and could not confront this anti-Semitism.  Finally, just as Professor Mamlock derived credibility from its theatrical source material, critics interpreted what Little Man, What Now? did not do as a film in terms of what its literary source material did do.  While these admittedly brief examples necessitate further attention and consideration, beyond only viewing the films themselves, scholars must move beyond the exclusive confines of the "reflection paradigm" and consider the ways in which depictions of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and other themes relevant to the Jewish experience fit within the overlapping dimensions of textual analysis, production history, and audience reception.

 

Primary Works Cited

Advertisement for Professor Mamlock.  The New York Times 7 Nov. 1938: 23.

Atkinson, Brooks.  "The Play."  The New York Times 23 Aug. 1933.

---.  "The Play: Nazi Customs and Manners."  Review of Professor Mamlock.  The New York Times 14 Apr. 1937. 

Barnes, Howard.  "Screen Version of Most Novels Disappointing."  The New York Herald Tribune 10 June 1934: E3.

Crowther, Bosley.  "Little Caesar Waits His Chance."  The New York Times 22 Jan. 1939.

"Film Censorship: An Administrative Analysis."  Columbia Law Review 39.8 (1939): 1383-1405.

Nugent, Frank S.  "Professor Mamlock, a Russian Appraisal of Nazi Culture, Has Its Premiere at the Cameo."  Review of Professor Mamlock (Amkino, 1938).  The New York Times 8 Nov. 1937.

Schallert, Edwin.  "Star's Talent Revealed Anew."  Review of Little Man, What Now?  The Los Angeles Times 15 June 1934: 14.

Watts, Richard, Jr.  "Sight and Sound: 'They Also Serve.'"  The New York Herald Tribune 13 May 1934: D1.

 

Secondary Works Cited

Baron, Lawrence.  "X-Men as J Men: The Jewish Subtext of a Comic Book Movie."  Shofar 22:1 (2003): 44-52.

Carr, Steven Alan.  Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History Up to World War II.  Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication.  New York NY: Cambridge U P, 2001.

---.  "'To Encompass the Unseeable': Foreign Film, Taste Culture, and the American Encounter with the Postwar Holocaust Film."  Postwar Relief and Rehabilitation Films and Docudramas.  Twelfth Biennial Lessons and Legacies Conference on the Holocaust.  Northwestern U, Evanston IL.  2 Nov. 2012.

Erens, Patricia.  The Jew in American Cinema.  Bloomington IN: Indiana U P, 1984.

Friedman, Lester D.  Hollywood's Image of the Jew.  Ungar Film Library.  New York NY: Ungar, 1982.

Koszarski, Richard.  "Lost Films from the National Film Collection."  Film Quarterly 23:2 (1969): 31-7.

Insdorf, Annette.  Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust.  3rd ed.  1983; Cambridge UK: Cambridge U P, 2003.

Langer, Lawrence J.  Preempting the Holocaust.  New Haven CT: Yale U P, 1998.

 

---

 

Appendix I: The Original List

 

Birthplace (1992)

 

What starts out as a matter-of-fact documentary journey to Poland ends up as a shattering encounter with the past. The film is chilling in how it depicts the unchanged attitudes of a small village in Poland, despite the Holocaust.

 

 

The Search (1948)

 

An exquisitely restrained look at the relationship between a nine-year-old refugee from Auschwitz and the American GI, played by Montgomery Clift, who adopts him. The film won an Academy Award for Best Writing and was shot in post-war Germany.  Now available from http://www.wbshop.com

 

 

Little Man, What Now? (1934)

 

This film zeroes in on German society at a time when many criticized Hollywood for not being more forthrightly anti-Nazi. It portrays the harsh conditions through the lens of two people who, very much in love, nonetheless struggle.

 

 

Playing for Time (1980)

 

It’s one of the best depictions of the Holocaust ever aired on American television. With playwright Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Fania Fenelon’s memoir and a superb performance by Vanessa Redgrave, it’s not just a stunning achievement for a made-for-TV movie, but for any fictionalized representation of the Holocaust.  Now available from http://www.olivefilms.com

 

 

The Last Stage (1948)

 

This docudrama was years ahead of its time. Directed by and starring Wanda Jakubowska, real survivors of Auschwitz reenact their experiences at the actual camp. The film was the first to put a human face on the suffering.  Now available from http://www.polartvideo.com

 

---

 

Appendix II: The Expanded List

 

Since the availability of these titles in an accessible format is indeed a moving target, some of these films may already be available or soon become so.  However, the titles themselves serve as a pretext to consider the broader implications of what audiences choose to remember about a particular ethnic group, and the cultural and historical traumas that this group has encountered.  By addressing this process of remembering as a complex and somewhat protracted process, I hope to show that what makes for a significant film title derives from a rather intricate interplay between creators, industry, meaning-making, and audiences.

 

In the list below, where possible, I've included a link to a reputable distributor.  I have not included links to copies available of the film in legacy formats, such as VHS, or DVDs that were duplicated by an individual from these formats and then sold on the Internet.  Some titles may be available on DVD in this manner, but their visual quality suffers significantly.  Similarly, I haven't included links to films or parts of films available on video streaming-only services like YouTube, or file-sharing services.  These are simply too ephemeral, and again, quality varies.

 

Hitler's Reign of Terror (Eureka, 1934)

 

Inside Nazi Germany (RKO, 1938)

 

Professor Mamlock (Amkino, 1938)

 

Crisis (Mayer-Burstyn, 1939)

 

Rehearsal for War (Mayer-Burstyn{?], 1939)

 

Lights Out in Europe (Mayer-Burstyn, 1940)

 

Lost Footage from The Great Dictator (UA, 1940)

 

Hold Back the Dawn (Paramount, 1941)

 

The Sea Wolf (Warner Bros., 1941)

 

Five Were Chosen (Clasa-Mohme, 1942)

 

Friendly Enemies (UA, 1942)

 

Five Graves to Cairo (Paramount, 1943)

 

In Our Time (Warner Bros., 1944)

 

The Master Race (RKO, 1944)

 

The Seventh Cross (MGM, 1944)

 

They Live in Fear (Columbia, 1944)

 

Death Mills (US Army Signal Corps, 1945)

 

The Last Chance (MGM, 1945)

 

Watchtower Over Tomorrow (War Activities Committee, 1945)

 

The Pale Horseman (OWI, 1946)

 

The Searching Wind (Paramount, 1946)

 

My Father's House (Independent, 1947)

 

The Roosevelt Story (United Artists, 1947)

 

Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (1948; Lipsky, 2011)

 

Border Street (1948; Globe, 1950)

 

A Foreign Affair (Paramount, 1948)

 

Answer for Anne (1950)

 

I Am a Camera (DCA, 1955)

 

The Original Playhouse 90 Live Teleplay of Judgment at Nuremberg (CBS, 1959)

 

Chronicle of a Summer (1961; Pathe, 1965)

 

Verdict for Tomorrow (Capital Cities, 1961)

 

Sighet, Sighet (1964; Alden, 200?)

 

No Way to Treat a Lady (Paramount, 1968)

 

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Film-Makers' Cooperative, 1972)

 

Lies My Father Told Me (Columbia, 1975)

 

Memory of Justice (Paramount, 1976)

 

Soldier of Orange (1977; International Picture Show, 1979)

 

David (1979; Kino, 1982)

 

The Revolt of Job (1983; TeleCulture, 1984)

 

A Painful Reminder: Evidence for All Mankind (Granada, 1985)

 

The Assault (Cannon, 1986)

 

Belladonna (1989)

 

The Longest Hatred (WGBH, 1993)

 

Anne No Nikki (1995)

 

Les MIserables (Warner Bros., 1995)

 

Nightmare's End: the Liberation of the Camps (Discovery, 1995)

 

The Man Who Captured Eichmann (Turner, 1996)

 

Wild Man Blues (Fine Line, 1997) - currently no U.S. distributor for DVD

 

Kurt Gerron's Karussel (Seventh Art, 1999)

 

Train of Life (Paramount, 1999)

 

The Debt (2007)

 

Menachem & Fred (2008)