Celebrated documentary about the Holocaust. The film consists of long interviews with survivors, witnesses and even former Nazi guards. Historically an extremely significant work, but stylistically uneven and often needlessly manipulative. Pauline Kael, who wrote a negative review of the film, went as far as to say that it wasn’t well made. That's an exaggeration, but she was correct in claiming that it was not a movie that (like a Holocaust documentary she loved, "The Sorrow And The Pity") opened the mind, but that it was a film that closed the mind. Most of all, she was right in arguing against the dubious contention that a nine-hour-plus movie about the death camps necessarily had to be a masterpiece of cinematic art. Timothy Snyder wrote an excellent review of the film.
September 9, 1985
Shoah (1985) ***
Celebrated documentary about the Holocaust. The film consists of long interviews with survivors, witnesses and even former Nazi guards. Historically an extremely significant work, but stylistically uneven and often needlessly manipulative. Pauline Kael, who wrote a negative review of the film, went as far as to say that it wasn’t well made. That's an exaggeration, but she was correct in claiming that it was not a movie that (like a Holocaust documentary she loved, "The Sorrow And The Pity") opened the mind, but that it was a film that closed the mind. Most of all, she was right in arguing against the dubious contention that a nine-hour-plus movie about the death camps necessarily had to be a masterpiece of cinematic art. Timothy Snyder wrote an excellent review of the film.
