Shoah

Starring:Shoah
Studio: New Yorker Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realize that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts, but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfill that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.

Amazon.com

To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realize that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts, but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfill that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.

Customer Reviews:

THE DEFINITIVE FILM ON THE HOLOCAUST.......2007-05-13

Director Claude Lanzmann purposefully chose not to show any horrific footage of what the Nazis did to the European Jews (such images he deemed as a kind of pornography). Instead, SHOAH is nine hours of imagery involving interviews with both victims and perpetrators, and curious images demonstrating how Nazis even managed to violate 'nature'. Horrific and brilliant.

the Human side of the Horror.......2007-04-08

This DVD set is very expensive. The contents of this DVD is usually only obtained in libraries, research institutions and colleges. Only after years of Amazon.com recommending this set to me did I finally caugh up the bucks to buy it and experience it for myself.

One may ask why they should pay over $150.00 for his DVD collection. Yet, if one desires to get a complete understanding of the Holocaust and it's result, there is not a better investment you can make!

Unlike stereotypical black and white Army documentaries of the result of Hitler's "Final Solution," "Shoah" brings to light the personal human stories of the Holocaust, both from the side of the surviving perpretrators and the victims. Also brought to light are the testimonies of the casual witnesses in the countries that were involved. It is far more personal than Schindler's List. It is over 9 hours of history in your face.

No archival footage was used in this presentation. It was filmed in the late 70's and early 80's by Claude Lanzmann. He interviews hundreds of surviving victims, SS officers and native populations of that era. Vividly through filming of the extermination camp sites, the "De-Jewed" villages in Poland, the forests where hundreds of thousands were burnt and buried, he brings the Holocaust to us in a personal, gut-wrenching manner.

This is especially important today. One must obtain a heartfelt experience of the Holocaust to appreciate the efforts of the hundreds of thousands of American lives sacraficed then to put an end to that mad "Thousand year Reich" that sponsored the industrial scale butchery of humanity. Relying on the thousand year hatreds of ethnic groups in Europe, Hitler and his goons fanned those fires in the hopes of "purifying" humanity of those they personally hated. Never in the history of humanity has this been possible until the Industrial Revolution made possible the machinery, technology and science required to make death an industry, where even the by-products of the butchery were a commodity.

In this movie you will see aged Jewish survivors of the "Aktion Reinhard" program. You will see them open up to Claude. You will see them break down in tears as he makes them remember the horrors that will haunt them the rest of their days. You will see many native Poles of that era, now as old people, as they reenact the slitting of their throats- the sign that they gave the trainloads of jews as they passed by them on their way to Treblinka. You will see hidden camera interviews of some surviving SS personell of those camps. As these people are being interviewed, Claude takes us on a visual tour of the camp properties as they appear today.

It is as if ghosts come back to life. We witness the ghosts of forgotten landscapes give up their dead to our view.

I cannot more powerfully reccomend you to obtain a copy of "Shoah" whatever the price. These days we are assaulted by Holocaust deniers, whether thay are Neo-Nazis spewing their excuses and hatreds through the media of Community Television of the internet, or Presidents of countries! Worst of all, there are even regimes in the world who sponsor Anti-Holocaust conventions in their country to discount and deny the reality of the Final Solution. This film is neccesary for everyone to examine the truth and examine their conciousnesses. ONLY through personal experience that this film depicts can collective humanity purify their souls so "never again" can such inhumanity and horror be revisited upon the world.

After viewing this film, you will never hear a train whistle in the same way again!

Look at the cover of this DVD set. You can see that aged train engineer, and the sign Treblinka. What you can't see there is shown in this film. It is that same engineer slitting his throat with his finger after the train passes that sign! All the people shown in this film have now died. But their ghosts, their souls and their stories are preserved forever in Shoah.

Defective DVD's of SHOAH.......2007-02-21

Of the five DVD's in the set, all five were defective. Two had video dropouts through much of the disk, and the remainder would show some problems and then skip over large parts of the program. They had to be returned as defective. This happened on two good DVD players.

Brilliant, brutal, but necessary.......2006-02-15

After the Holocaust most survivors' chose for their memories to remain unspoken. They opted to repress the horror and move on with what remnant of life they could. Fortunately, their silence did not persist, for if it did, enemies of humanity who choose to falsify and revise history, declaring the Holocaust never existed, would be armed with devastating ammunition..."where is the victims' testimony?".

With Shoah we finally get to hear, en masse, the devastating account of civilization's most heinous crime. While every memory of the horror cannot be captured, most, like the unfortunate lives consumed in the madness, are lost for ever. Yet gratefully we have this document to mark society beginning to come to terms with and document honestly what humanity is capable of.

As the last survivors are rapidly dying off with age, soon we will be without first hand witnesses. Thankfully through Shoah and other efforts, we are documenting and preserving in perpetuity the Holacaust to forever encase the evidence in an envelope of truth and righteousness where it forever belongs. Let Shaoh along with Yad Vashem, The Sorrow and the Pity, and the precious few other venues of masterpiece historical documentation persevere. They have captured the immense odiousness, horror, insanity, and pure evil that humanity is capable of and should not only never be forgotten but taught to all presently and for posterity so all of humanity can bear witness. Only through dedicated vigilance to awareness can we hope to avoid recurrence.

Important documentary with some shortcomings.......2005-09-21

Because of the sheer length of this documentary and the number of topics covered, it's hard to pin down an exact analysis of it, since so much is going on. I agree this is a historically important documentary, with many powerful scenes, both during interviews and just during scenes when the camera is wordlessly panning over what remains of the camps today. Although it would be too easy and simplistic to just automatically give this a 5-star review and say it's the best most authorative film on the Shoah ever made. This by no means covers nearly everything that happened during the Shoah, even in its massive length of nine and a half hours. About the last hour is devoted to just the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising, but apart from that the ghettoes aren't covered. What this documentary does cover are five of the six Vernichtungslageren (annihiliation camps) in Poland--Treblinka, Sobibór, Belzec, Chelmno, and Oswiecim (Auschwitz), and what happened to the people on their way there in the death wagons. There are interviews with people on all sides--survivors (including the only two survivors of Chelmno, Simon Srebnik and Michael Podchlebnik), ghetto guards and bureaucrats, people who ran the camps (particularly Franz Suchomel of Treblinka), villagers who watched the death wagons coming and going (their reactions to these peoples' fate and what they claim to have done for them seems mixed), the survivors themselves, and the Polish diplomat Jan Karski, who had begged the world to stop the genocide he knew very well was going on. Among the survivors interviewed was Rudolf Vrba, one of my heroes, who escaped Oswiecim on 7 April 1944 along with his friend Alfred Wetzler to try to warn the world about what was being planned for Hungarian Jewry. Another big plus supporting this documentary is that it was made in 1985, when there were more survivors around, and most of them were younger than they are today. And though some people might be turned off by how much of the film is in subtitles, I enjoyed hearing all of that German, French, Italian, Polish, and Hebrew, and felt my own listening comprehension of German vastly improving as the film wore on, at times barely needing the subtitles.

All of that said, this film at times feels like it overshot the mark, since it covers so much ground even within that specific topic of the extermination camps in Poland, and yet doesn't really seem to be very structured. Many times this documentary has a very nonlinear feel and composition, which at one level works since when dealing with something like the Shoah, all concepts of time and place really did become unimportant and nonlinear, but even so, it can also have the feeling of just jumping back and forth between interviews and footage. For example, we return to several interviews a number of times after having had long stretches in between covering other things. There were also some segments that could have been cut and didn't really belong there, like the dancing couple in the German nightclub. For the entire documentary, information is merely being presented; no conclusions are drawn, no analyses made, no archival footage used. Some people might feel this is just as appropriate a technique as having such a nonlinear structure, but after finding out what Ron Rosenbaum has to say about Monsieur Lanzmann in the book 'Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil,' one is led to question why he used some of these techniques and why he doesn't feel there should be any analysis of the Shoah, no attempt to explain why these awful things happened or account for the great evil that took place, as though accounting for it somehow justifies it.

Certainly this is an important film everyone should see at least once, but some of the effect is lessened by the lack of archival footage, the nonlinear structure and layout, and the refusal to draw any conclusions, make any analyses, provide any historical background for why these events were set in motion in the first place. It's an important film about the Shoah, but by no means the most important one or the most authoritative one ever made. The price also seems a little hefty; is it because of this film's huge reputation that it costs much more than most other four-disc sets?

Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]

Average customer rating:

Outstanding, and the best I've seen in video
why pay more?

Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]
Director: Claude Lanzmann
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

World War II | Military & War | Genres | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B000AS4L16

Product Description

SHOAH is a magical film about the most barbaric act of the 20th century. Previous commentaries on the Holocaust, with its ravished skeletons and corpses, have left us shaken, but now for the first time, we experience it in our heads, in our flesh. Claude Lanzmann spent eleven years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the Final Solution-the Nazi's effort to systematically exterminate human beings. without dramatic enactment or archival footage, but with extraordinary testimonies, SHOAH renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination: the minutiae of timetables and finances, the logistics of herding victims into the gas chambers and disposing of the corpses afterward, the bureaucratic procedures which expedited the killing of millions of people without mentioning the words "killing" or "people". Through haunted landscapes and human voice, the past comes brilliantly alive. SHOAH is a heroic endeavor to humanize the inhuman, to tell the untellable. It is an immensely disturbing, even shattering experience, yet in its solemnity and beauty not a morbid or disheartening one. There are few works of art which leave one with such a deep appreciation for the preciousness and meaning of life. *** This officially licensed 4-DVD set from South Korean is in English, German, Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish, and French with optional English or Korean subtitles. Fullscreen with Dolby Digital Sound; NTSC "ALL" regions worldwide (Region 0).

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding, and the best I've seen in video.......2007-03-16

This Lenten season, I've taken up the topic of the Holocaust for a fuller review than the stuff that generally comes out on PBS (though I do seem to recall them running this very film at one time or another). Without any actual photographs or film clips from the 1940's, Lanzmann gives us the best portrait through the oral histories that I've yet to encounter in the visual media. It was a bit annoying at times to wait for the interpreter to translate languages such as Polish into French, but the German part had substantial impact, since I claim to "speak German" and wish to study it more. I've been through the whole film as in the 4-disc set, and have started doing the separate discs again. Especially interesting to me was the extensive coverage of central and eastern European rail systems, with the fine assortments of how they looked in 1985. I want to take another trip to that part of the world and see what it's like today (e.g., is there still such use of horses in Poland?).

What gets me the most, I think, is that my overall impression of the way Europeans live is as a much more earnest, sincere and authentic style than some of the phoniness we put up with in America, but then they got into all of this, didn't they? Mass delusion, persuasion and compulsion seem possible anywhere among humanity.

why pay more?.......2007-02-22

I was a bit hesitant to by this particular Korean make. But the risk paid off. The picture is excellent and the subtitles--English, Korean, etc.--are easily removeable and switchable. So don't get ripped off by those who have you over a barrel at $149.00?!

As for the film itself: it is one of those rare gems that proves less is more. The only minor complaint I have is the mellowdrama created during a hidden camera interview with an SS man; the director cuts back and forth to the van outside that is stealthily recording the interview. That is the only brief heavy handedness in what is otherwise a masterpiece.

Average customer rating:

Shoeshine [1946] (Region 2 Import)
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Manufacturer: Eureka!
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

1.33:1 original aspect ratio
Audio Commentary
Italian with optional English Subtitles
Through Children's Eyes (documentary)
24-page booklet and much more!!

ASIN: B000PR09PY

Product Description

Directed by the great Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D), Shoeshine was filmed on location in postwar Rome using non-professional actors. It was inspired by the real stories of those struggling to overcome the oppressive forces of a corrupt and ineffective political system. De Sica's film depicts the troubled lives of two young boys caught up in the chaos of a world plagued by poverty and unemployment. Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) work in the street, where they shine the shoes of American troops. They dream of a better life, seeking solace in a horse to escape their harsh reality. When the boys are implicated in a petty crime, they are punished by the society that has robbed them of their innocence, resulting in tragic consequences. Shoeshine is widely regarded as one of the finest films to have emerged from the Italian neorealist cinema. It was the first foreign film to receive an Oscar. "The high quality of this motion picture," noted the Academy, "brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity."

Shoah 4-DVD Set [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Netherlands ]

Average customer rating:

Shoah 4-DVD Set [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Netherlands ]
Director: Claude Lanzmann
Manufacturer: Videofilmexpress
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Product Description

Netherlands released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. LANGUAGES: Dutch (Subtitles), English (Subtitles), French (Subtitles), German (Subtitles), Spanish (Subtitles), SYNOPSIS: Claude Lanzmann directed this 9 1/2 hour documentary of the Holocaust without using a single frame of archive footage. He interviews survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (whom he had to film secretly since though only agreed to be interviewed by audio). His style of interviewing by asking for the most minute details is effective at adding up these details to give a horrifying portrait of the events of Nazi genocide. He also shows, or rather lets some of his subjects themselves show, that the anti-Semitism that caused 6 million Jews to die in the Holocaust is still alive in well in many people that still live in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. SPECIAL FEATURES: Box Set, Interactive Menu,

The Sorrow and the Pity - 2 DVD Special Edition [NON-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

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The Sorrow and the Pity - 2 DVD Special Edition [NON-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]
Director: Marcel Ophuls
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Special Editions | Fully Loaded DVDs | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000NDOX3E

Product Description

Made for French television, Marcel Ophuls's magnificent four-hour-plus documentary explores the average French citizen's memories of the Nazi occupation. Just how large and effective was the fabled Resistance Movement? Is cooperation the same thing as collaboration? And how did one's up-close-and-personal experiences with the occupation troops impact one's postwar life? These questions are probingly posed (but not all are answered) by Ophuls, who also acts as offscreen interviewer. The first half of the film is a mosaic of sights and sounds from the years 1940-1944: Maurice Chevalier singing for the German troops, clips of propagandistic newsreels, appalling vignettes from the scurrilous anti-Semitic film drama Jew Suss (1940), and the like. Ophuls' interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, rationalization" is fully illustrated in the film's long second half, which is devoted almost entirely to interviews, in which the subjects display emotions ranging from mild embarrassment to abrupt rage. Long, challenging, exhausting, but never dull.

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