Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust
(2004)
Narrated by: Gene Hackman
I was drawn to watch this movie, because I've always been extremely fascinated by the Holocaust and honestly, besides written record, film is the only way that the Holocaust has influenced the lives of people beyond it's time stretch. I think that this film's premise is so important, because it recognises how Hollywood created the memories and impressions that many people have of the way the Nazi's genocide affected the world in the second world war. As i now live in a time period where Holocaust survivors are beginning to die off in entirety, i think having an objective and accurate understanding of the true goings on of the horror of the Holocaust is imperative to the avoidance of a future repetition of this grotesque genocide. Their were many things in this film that, although I've watched a multitude of Holocaust/WWII films, had no idea went on. I didn't know that early on Hollywood was in close quarters with the Germans and originally had, under the request of German political figures, fired all of the Jewish American workers working remotely in Germany. Imaginary Witnesses shows how the Hollywood of pre-WWII America depicted Germany almost entirely in an acceptable light and how the face of Nazi Germany on the silver screen changed into it's modern day perception over time. The US Senate had even created, pre world war the Nye-Clark Committee to investigate charges that Jewish influencers in Hollywood were attempting to sway the public opinion to propel the U.S. into war (1934-1936). Senator Nye was quoted saying that it was "Jews and not Hitler that posed the greatest threat to America" little did he know how wrong he was. Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator was one of the films deemed unacceptable by this committee, it's on my list of must see films. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Hollywood view of Nazi Germany changed, although immediately after the war most of the films were focused on the American conflict in the Pacific. It's strange how the leaders of Hollywood had no true idea of what was going on in Europe until after the war was finished, this film gives a detailed description of how the leaders of film were exposed to the gritty, appalling images shipped straight from overseas. Some men viewing this film apparently left the room to vomit, they were so disturbed by the reality that had been shrouded in secrecy until now. Jack Warner was quoted saying after he was exposed to the footage: "No one connected to motion pictures who has seen these things can allow themselves to assume responsibility for a screen which portrays only a make believe world." This film presents the idea that the U.S. didn't widely broadcast this footage to the public immediately, because it would have hampered efforts of the American public to rehabilitate Germany after the war. Not till the late 1950's was the subject revisited through the film about Anne Frank. Many directors were not so much scared of the idea of creating a film about the Holocaust, but about misrepresenting something of such great gravity. Schindlers List is given a large tribute in the movie, because it was a movie that set the standards for a Holocaust film. It most certainly was a film that defined my view of the Holocaust at a young age very violently, it has branded itself into my memory and the soundtrack is one of the most poignant film scores i've ever had the pleasure of listening to. A historian finishes out the film by saying, "The Holocaust has become the negative absolute in American society. In a world of relativism we don't know what's bad and we don't know what's good, but the one thing we can agree upon is that this is absolute evil. It has become the standard by which we judge evil and therefore the standard by which we begin to establish values. Part of it's attraction to filmmakers, part of its attraction to audiences is your touching the absolute as you come closer to the truth of the Holocaust. And, part of the failure of film, if it fails, is not to touch that absolute, not to go to the extreme." In conclusion, i found this to be a very informative film on a subject that is not often discussed by the general public. Having knowledge of how Hollywood affects the public's view on many political and historical issues is imperative to having an accurate worldview.
Films to Watch: presented in the film:
*films i REALLY want to watch or have watched
- I Married a Nazi (1940)
- Underground (1940)
- To be or Not to be (1942)
- Hitler's Madman (1943)
- Tomorrow, The World! (1944)
- None Shall Escape (1944) *
- Gentleman's Agreement (1947) *
- The Search (1948)*
- Singing in the Dark (1956)
- The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
- Judgement at Nuremburg (1959)
- The Pawnbroker (1965)**
- Ship of Fools (1965)
- The Producers (1967)
- Harold and Maude (1971)
- Cabaret (1971)
- Holocaust (tv production 1977)*
- Kitty: Return to Auschwitz (1979)*
- Sophie's Choice (1982)*
- War and Rememberance (tv production 1988)
- Schindlers List (1993)*
- Jakob the Liar (1999)*
- The Pianist (2002)*
No comments:
Post a Comment