THE MISREPRESENTATION OF HOLOCAUST FILMS

The misrepresentation of Holocaust films

The misrepresentation of Holocaust films

This paper present misrepresentation of holocaust films for this purpose I have selected two movies Schindler's List and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Schindler's List is a 1993 American drama film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.

The film was ox office success and recipient of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, as well as numerous other awards. In 2007, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked the film eighth on its list of the 100 best American films of all time (up one position from its 9th place listing on the 1998 list, The First Film By Spielberg to get an R Rating by the MPAA.

How do you explain the Holocaust to an 8 year-old boy? How would it appear to him if he saw a concentration camp with his own eyes not knowing what it was? This is the premise of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, based on the book by John Boyne. Though the story is told through the eyes of oy, Bruno (Asutterfield), this movie is powerful and emotionally moving enough that viewer discretion is recommended for pre-teens. But for teenagers and adults, this is a film to see.

The movie opens with a happy scene. Bruno is running through a city square followed by three friends, all pretending to be planes. But this city is Berlin festooned with bright red German flags and swastikas. As they run carefree through the streets, they are juxtaposed with the harsh reality of the time: German soldiers restraining savage dogs rounding up families of Jews.

When Bruno's father, a German officer, gets promoted to be the commandant of a concentration camp Bruno sees it as a displacement from his friends. Arriving at the new home in the country, it is a stark contrast to the home they left. Where that was open and airy, classically defined, this new one looks more like a prison. Even the photography of Bruno on the staircase behind full-length banister rails makes him look like a jail-bird.

Apart from all his friends, Bruno is lonely. When he discovers a way out of his own "prison compound," he discovers a place with arbed wire fence and a little boy, his own age, sitting by it. Schmuel (Jack Scanlon) is wearing striped pajamas with a number. Bruno thinks it's a game. Little does he know.

http://www.elpais.com/recorte/20080730elprdv_4/LCO340/Ies/nino_Jack_Scanlon.jpgAs the film progresses, so do the characters. Bruno begins to see that Schmuel and the others in pajamas are different, or at least are treated differently. He is ...