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Schindler's list, common sense media reviewers.

Accurate, heartbreaking masterpiece about the Holocaust.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The film shows the best and worst of human nature

The film follows Schindler's transformation fr

Depictions of point-blank shootings, murders, beat

A few scenes of nakedness associated with sex (bar

Anti-Semitic epithets. "F--k," "s--

The Nazi commander is often drunk. Schindler smoke

Parents need to know that Schindler's List is a brutal, emotionally devastating three-hour drama that won several Oscars and has a powerful message about the human spirit -- but it pulls absolutely no punches when depicting the Holocaust. There are arbitrary murders and mass killings, Nazi commanders…

Positive Messages

The film shows the best and worst of human nature -- psychotic mass murder and altruistic saving of lives.

Positive Role Models

The film follows Schindler's transformation from greedy war profiteer to humanitarian who eventually saves the lives of 1,100 people destined for death at Auschwitz. He learns and demonstrates compassion, integrity, and perseverance.

Violence & Scariness

Depictions of point-blank shootings, murders, beatings, and mass murders. A man kisses a woman against her will.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A few scenes of nakedness associated with sex (bare female breasts, thrusting and moaning), but many other scenes show concentration camp members naked in non-sexual contexts (full-frontal nudity of Jewish prisoners in the shower, when they are being stripped and examined, etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Anti-Semitic epithets. "F--k," "s--t," "bitch," "damn," "ass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The Nazi commander is often drunk. Schindler smokes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Schindler's List is a brutal, emotionally devastating three-hour drama that won several Oscars and has a powerful message about the human spirit -- but it pulls absolutely no punches when depicting the Holocaust. There are arbitrary murders and mass killings, Nazi commanders compare Jews to rats, children are killed, and there are scenes of shocking, grisly violence. There's also plenty of smoking and drinking, and several scenes of nakedness. In two of them, a woman is naked from the waist up in bed and in sexual situations. But in the rest, nakedness is used to humiliate and harass Jewish residents of concentration camps. There's full-frontal nudity of Jewish prisoners in the shower, when they are being stripped and examined, etc. There are anti-Semitic epithets as well as words such as "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," "damn," and "ass." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (35)
• Kids say (106)

Based on 35 parent reviews

The Greatest Movie of all Time!

What's the story.

In SCHINDLER'S LIST, Steven Spielberg displays the virtuosity of a great documentary film maker: The Holocaust, in which six million Jews, political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gays were killed, is too vast and too atrocious to fathom. So Spielberg searches history for the one true story that will make it comprehensible. He gives us Czechoslovakian businessman Oskar Schindler ( Liam Neeson ), a grandiose, insinuating businessman bent on making a successful business on the backs of Jews who are robbed of their homes, jobs, property, and, many, their lives. The film follows Schindler's transformation from greedy war profiteer to humanitarian who eventually saves the lives of 1,100 people destined for death at Auschwitz. But there are two main characters in this film. If one is Schindler, the other, undoubtedly, is the Holocaust itself. Spielberg gives us the Holocaust in the names of the Schindler Jews, and uses real-life stories to make it real. We get Ihtzak Stern (played with quiet rage and dignity by Ben Kingsley ), the Jewish accountant who runs Schindler's manufacturing plant. We get Helen Hirsch ( Embeth Davidtz ), the Jewish woman who serves as a Nazi commander's (played with icy sadism by Ralph Fiennes ) maid and the object of his twisted adoration. We get, as the title implies, a list of people, of faces, of stories that make the atrocities of World War II real.

Is It Any Good?

There are few films more powerful and important than this 1993 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, but that's not why you should watch this film. Watch it for the brilliant storytelling, great acting, and its message that one person can make a difference in the face of evil.

While Schindler's List is a brilliant film, its three-plus hour running time and true-to-life grisly violence make it mostly a film for adults. If you have a particularly mature teen, share this film with him and talk about it afterward. Families that watch the film may want to watch the bonus features on the real-life experiences of the Schindler Jews and on the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. The film may prompt a discussion of genocide elsewhere in the world and what individuals can do to help put an end to it. It may also prompt a visit to a museum of tolerance or the Holocaust Museum.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about their reaction to Schindler's List 's emotionally difficult material. Do you believe the atrocities depicted here can happen again? Why or why not?

Families may want to watch additional DVDs produced by the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation designed to help kids understand and confront bias.

Discuss other ways in which individuals make a difference.

How do the characters in Schindler's List demonstrate compassion , integrity , and perseverance ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 1, 1993
• On DVD or streaming : September 9, 2004
• Cast : Ben Kingsley , Liam Neeson , Ralph Fiennes
• Director : Steven Spielberg
• Inclusion Information : Indian/South Asian actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Integrity , Perseverance
• Run time : 196 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : language, violence, and some sexuality
• Last updated : May 15, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Schindler's List Reviews

It brought the Holocaust to a mass non-Jewish audience at a time when survivors were dying of old age, and testimony was at risk of being lost.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Feb 7, 2024

Spielberg employs all the emotive Hollywood tools at his disposal and the result is a remarkable film with wide appeal and real importance. Neeson is phenomenal, but matched by towering performances from Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2024

A great film, a powerful film, and even if it’s not the definitive American Holocaust film, it remains on the very short list of the most important ones. (30th anniversary)

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 19, 2023

This isn't your high-octane thriller; rather, acts of heroism unfold with a deliberate, strategic cadence.

Full Review | Dec 12, 2023

Spielberg’s most personal film is also his finest and most altruistic.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2023

It's the faces that make Schindler's List a magnificent, harrowing, stomach-wrenching, emotional piece of cinema.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

Schindler's List is not only a masterpiece but something of a miracle.

A film of immense power and the deepest sincerity.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 25, 2022

It’s a bad business

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 5, 2022

Steven Spielberg's triumphant Schindler's List is a remarkable and moving memorial to an historical Holocaust. It is also a timely reminder of what genocide and "ethnic cleansing" really mean. But, above all, it is a cracking movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 7, 2022

Using every ounce of his awe some technical skill, the man who sent T. rex and Indiana Jones racing through our imagination brings us a story of human horror beyond imagination.

Full Review | Apr 15, 2021

Once in a very great while, a movie insinuates itself so deeply into your consciousness that it offers not vicarious experience but instead, direct experience. Steven Spielberg's heartfelt, monumental Schindler's List is such a movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 15, 2021

This is a movie that succeeds brilliantly not just in bringing a terrible chapter in history back to life, but in meticulously depicting the processes through which a self-obsessed and immature man becomes integrated and responsible.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 15, 2021

There are enough "Spielbergian" set pieces and incidental touches to keep Schindler accessible to those who believe that the best Spielberg is the perky Spielberg of the E.T. and Indiana Jones romps.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 15, 2021

How does one comprehend the magnitude of the Holocaust? Remarkably, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List defines the horror of Hitler's "final solution" on vividly human terms without diminishing its scope or impact.

Few films have ever dealt so chillingly with what philosopher Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil."

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 15, 2021

Liam Neeson is a splendid Schindler, tall, handsome, devil-may-care and a poker-playing genius. Ben Kingsley, as Itzhak Stern, Schindler's accountant and chief aide, is as brilliant as ever, and Ralph Fiennes is evil and powerful as Amon Goeth.

A towering cinematic accomplishment from director Steven Spielberg that left all other 1993 films in its wake.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Apr 15, 2021

Spielberg's dazzlingly modulated epic Schindler's List is nothing less than astonishing.

A near-documentary, brilliantly designed and choreographed, [and] a character study in which Ralph Fiennes, the winningly urbane Liam Neeson, and the magnificently impassive Ben Kingsley attain a memorable dramatic intensity.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, black writers week, the list is life: on the 30th anniversary of schindler's list.

Film critics have both the educational blessing and the soul-crushing curse of watching a lot of Holocaust films, and they mostly come in two varieties. Some, like “ The Pianist ,” “ The Survivor ,” “In Darkness,” and “ Defiance ,” are survival stories, usually showing a single character or a small group navigating the breadth of inhumanity surrounding them, and somehow living through it. Others, like “ Son of Saul ” and the new “ The Zone of Interest ”—or documentaries like “Night and Fog” and “ Shoah ”—are bleak, harrowing viewing experiences that emphasize the fact that survival sadly wasn’t the reality that most European Jews experienced. And then there’s “Schindler’s List,” which somehow navigated both of these realities at the same time, and did so for a mass audience. 

Released thirty years ago last month, “Schindler’s List” went on to become a genuine blockbuster, finishing fourth at the international box office for 1993 (behind only “ Jurassic Park ,” “ Mrs. Doubtfire ,” and “ The Fugitive ”). It also became an Oscar juggernaut, with 12 nominations and seven wins, including Best Picture and Steven Spielberg ’s long-awaited first win for Best Director. Rewatching “Schindler’s List” today, I’m once again staggered at how it balances both hope and hopelessness more effectively than perhaps any other film ever has. It’s a story that concludes with one of the strongest and most unforgettable sequences of hope to ever grace cinema screens, but the journey to that catharsis submerges the viewer in nearly three hours of genocide, uncompromising in its portrayal. 

The film was adapted from Thomas Keneally ’s 1982 historical novel, Schindler’s Ark , which detailed how Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party, transitioned from war profiteering off Jewish slave labor in the early years of WWII, to eventually spending his fortune to buy the lives of 1,200 Jews from the Nazis in the closing months of the war, saving them from near-certain death at Auschwitz. Universal Studios quickly bought the film rights to the book and Spielberg was attached almost immediately, but he didn’t believe he was ready for the material, and he spent years trying to recruit other directors onto the project—including Martin Scorsese , Sydney Pollack , and Roman Polanski (a Holocaust survivor who eventually directed 2002’s “The Pianist”)—before finally deciding to mount it himself.  

The legacy of the film looms large in several different ways, both for the film industry and for our collective understanding and preservation of Holocaust stories. Most obviously, it led to Spielberg establishing the Shoah Foundation in 1994, which has become one of the world’s most invaluable resources for Holocaust accounts, research, and education. But given how much “Schindler’s List” became synonymous for audiences with Hollywood prestige and awards success in the ‘90s, the film’s critical legacy has become curiously almost non-existent. For example, it has never appeared on one of Sight & Sound ’s once-per-decade polls of the greatest films of all time, including 2022’s extended top 250 list. 

In part this may be a byproduct of Spielberg himself, whose films have always had a slightly complicated relationship with the critical community because of how ubiquitous and populist they lean, to the extent that nearly all of his films performed poorly in the last  Sight & Sound poll (" Jaws " placed the highest, at #104). Today, “Schindler’s List” seems to exist almost beyond criticism or praise, neither lauded as an essential part of film history nor dissected with revisionist critical hot takes. And that lack of a critical legacy even extends to this anniversary; a few years ago, I wrote about the 20th anniversary of “ The Royal Tenenbaums ,” and I was disappointed that my piece got lost amid seemingly every other publication on Earth writing a similar piece the same week. But for “Schindler’s List,” the 30th anniversary has barely merited a mention anywhere, with only The Guardian opting to revisit it. 

But that wasn’t always the case, and those who didn’t see it play out in real time may be shocked at some of the critical backlash “Schindler’s List” received in 1993. A few prominent critics and directors really took it to task, with Claude Lanzmann , director of the nine-hour Holocaust documentary “Shoah” (1985), calling it “kitschy melodrama” and a fictionalized “transgression.” But Roger Ebert loved it, and in his 2001 “Great Movies” essay on the film, he retorted that “the medium of film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen.” For as astonishing a historical achievement as “Shoah” is—and it’s surely one of the most important films ever made (not just to the cinematic art form, but to humanity)—it never found audiences beyond small academic settings. 

Though Ebert also had some questions about the film. He was unsure of the film’s juxtaposition between Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson ), who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews, and Amon Göth ( Ralph Fiennes ), who might have personally murdered just as many. In his unrelenting sadism, Göth was so evil that Ebert worried it might have diminished the reality of most Nazis as normal people who were programmed into evil deeds, rather than born psychopaths like Göth. But I believe the film needed Göth to be just as he was, for a few reasons. 

The most important is simple accuracy. It’s historical fact that Göth was in charge of the Polish camp (Kraków-Płaszów) that Schindler took Jewish workers from, and it’s historical fact that Göth really was that sadistic. (Göth was the first person in history convicted of homicide at a war crimes trial, for “personally killing, maiming and torturing a substantial, albeit unidentified number of people.”) To downplay Göth’s inherent evil in the service of movie plotting would have been a disservice to a historical record that deserves as much accuracy as possible. 

But perhaps just as important is the effect witnessing Göth’s abject evil had upon Schindler. Spielberg wisely avoids any sort of interiority with Schindler, and as a result the film doesn’t attempt to truly answer the questions about Schindler’s dramatic character transition. We simply watch a charismatic and well-connected man begin the 1940s as a war profiteer who personally made millions by staffing his factory with Jewish slave labor, and then by 1945 he had spent every last dime he had to rescue 1,200 Jews from almost-certain death at Auschwitz—which is where the remaining Kraków-Płaszów Jews were sent when the labor camp was closed in January of 1945—hiding them out in a factory that secretly produced nothing. No one knows for sure what caused this change, but perhaps spending years witnessing the actions of a pure evil like Amon Göth inspired Schindler to an opposite path. 

Other choices in the film also merit debate and analysis. One thing that particularly struck me on this viewing was the sexualized nudity of the Nazi women that Schindler and Göth sleep with in the film. There have been Holocaust films with sex before (“Black Book” and “ The Night Porter ” quickly come to mind), but they’ve all been cases of either Nazis overtly raping Jews, or, at the very least, the result of a highly problematic power dynamic between the two. “Schindler’s List” remains the only Holocaust film I’ve seen with sex between two Nazis, where the sex is really just a consensual act of pleasure, and it’s jarring. It initially seems out of place (especially for Spielberg, whose 50-year filmmaking career has been virtually devoid of sex scenes). But it’s jarring in a way that’s tremendously effective. These people were having sex while they were committing genocide. The genocide, it seems, did not kill the mood. Even Jonathan Glazer ’s brilliant new film, “The Zone of Interest” (which is about the domestic life of the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife), never portrays that. 

The most debated of Spielberg’s choices is undoubtedly the little girl in the red coat, one of the only instances of color in the otherwise black-and-white film. We see her during the 1943 Nazi liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, and then later among a pile of dead bodies. Many feel this was so heavy-handed that it takes you out of the film. I think it reminds us of reality. Janusz Kamiński ’s Oscar-winning cinematography in the film is consistently stunning, but one effect of black and white visuals is placing things firmly into a long-ago past. And it’s easy to think of the Holocaust as yesteryear, but we must remember how recently it really was. For example, Amon Göth’s daughter is still alive today (and she’s been a willing and articulate participant in documentaries about the descendants of Nazi leaders, like the deeply sad yet undeniably powerful “Hitler’s Children”). 

Thinking about that recency is particularly chilling in early 2024, just a few months after the Jewish community suffered its worst attack since the Holocaust. And Israeli leadership has responded to that attack in a way that many describe as genocidal, calling into question whether anyone, on either side, has really learned or retained any lessons from the Holocaust about the xenophobic demonizing of marginalized groups. Personally, it’s hard not to wonder what subtle effect the absence of a truly ubiquitous Holocaust film in the three decades since “Schindler’s List” may have had on the steady rise in antisemitism we’ve seen during that same span. If you believe Holocaust education has the power to help stem the tide of hate, there was no bigger asset to that education than “Schindler’s List,” which made over $300 million at the global box office in 1993. And I don’t cite that as an achievement of studio profit, but rather as an achievement of viewer volume. 

How many movie tickets did $300 million equate to in 1993 dollars? A lot. One wishes that many people showed an interest in learning about the Holocaust today and sitting uncomfortably with its stark realities. In 2013, most of the people I know refused to see “ 12 Years a Slave ,” because they said it was just too depressing. But in 1993, many of those same people flocked to the theater for “Schindler’s List.” (I know this is an imperfect comparison, and White Guilt is certainly a significant element of what kept audiences from “12 Years a Slave,” but it also feels like a dwindling percentage of people each year are willing to subject themselves to real discomfort from a movie. Not when social media dopamine is waiting right in our pocket, 24/7.)

This is also an interesting time to think about the legacy of “Schindler’s List” because “The Zone of Interest” opened in limited release on December 15, thirty years to the day after “Schindler’s List” opened wide in 1993. What kind of audience will it find as it expands to more markets in the coming weeks? It’s much more obviously an art film, with a foreign cast and not much plot to speak of, and by a filmmaker who’s far less well-known than Spielberg. Though “The Zone of Interest” doesn’t feature a single on-screen death, it’s arguably one of the most spine-chilling and difficult films ever made. While it’s reductive to ever refer to “Schindler’s List” as “entertainment,” that feels like a vaguely appropriate descriptor when compared to “Zone.” For as great as “The Zone of Interest” is (and I think it’s the best film of 2023), it’s exceedingly likely that it will play almost exclusively to a small echo chamber of viewers who already understand antisemitism and the banality of evil. But “Schindler’s List” helped bring an understanding of those evils to the masses—to people who hadn’t already learned those lessons, and otherwise might never have. 

And that’s part of “Schindler’s” greatness. It tackles arguably the most depressing subject imaginable and portrays that subject with uncompromising accuracy, and yet it leaves you with such hope that the whole 196-minute venture felt palatable for mass consumption. For as much death and inhumanity as there is on the screen, the final message of the film is how those 1,200 Jews saved by Oskar Schindler had, by 1993, multiplied to 6,000. Thirty years on, that number may have doubled.

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Schindler’s List

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Remember Me 14 years ago
• Shutter Island 14 years ago
• Green Zone 14 years ago

After several attempts at making a fully realized, mature film, Steven Spielberg has finally put it all together in “Schindler’s List.” A remarkable work by any standard, this searing historical and biographical drama, about a Nazi industrialist who saved some 1,100 Jews from certain death in the concentration camps, evinces an artistic rigor and unsentimental intelligence unlike anything the world’s most successful filmmaker has demonstrated before. Marked by a brilliant screenplay, exceptionally supple technique, three staggeringly good lead performances and an attitude toward the traumatic subject matter that is both passionately felt and impressively restrained, this is the film to win over Spielberg skeptics.

How the general public will take to a three-hour, fifteen-minute, black-and-white epic about the Holocaust with no major stars is another matter. Even with the cards of conventional wisdom stacked against it, top reviews, off-entertainment page coverage, possible awards and the Spielberg name should stir enough interest to turn release into an event, elevating it to must-see status for discerning audiences worldwide. The gamble should pay off financially as well as artistically.

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Besides being familiar, the Nazi persecution of the Jews is perilous subject matter since it can so easily elicit automatic reactions of moral outrage, personal horror, religious self-righteousness and dramatic extremes, not to mention severe depression.

Popular on Variety

Taking their cue from Australian writer Thomas Keneally’s 1982 book of the same name, Spielberg and scenarist Stephen Zaillian have overcome the problem of familiarity by presenting innumerable details of this grim history that are utterly fresh and previously unexplored, at least in mainstream films. And they have triumphed over the most obvious potential pitfalls by keeping as their main focus a man whose mercenary instincts only gradually turned him into an unlikely hero and savior.

Oskar Schindler (the imposing, impeccably groomed Liam Neeson) is masterfully introduced in a rowdy nightclub sequence that instantly builds interest and mystique around him as he curries favor with the Nazis, who have completed their lightning conquest of Poland in September 1939.

With Jews being registered and entering Krakow at the rate of 10,000 per week , Nazi Party member Schindler arranges to run a major company that will be staffed by unpaid Jews. Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) becomes his accountant and right-hand man and helps build the concern into a major supplier of pots, pans and cookware for troops at the front.

In near-documentary fashion and often using a dizzyingly mobile, hand-held camera, Spielberg (who operated his own camera for many of these sequences) deftly sketches the descent of the Jews from refugee settlers in Krakow to their confinement within 16 square blocks by 1941, to the creation of a Plaszow Forced Labor Camp in 1942, to the brutal liquidation of the ghetto the following year. In fascinating detail, and using a plethora of vivid characters, the film shows how the black market worked, how previously well-to-do families were forced into miserable dwellings, how the Judenrat — Jews nominally empowered by the Germans — oversaw and carried out Nazi law, how some managed to survive and others didn’t.

In these sequences, the seed is planted for one of the picture’s superbly developed great themes — that the matter of who lived and died was completely, utterly, existentially arbitrary. As one of the characters observes, the casualness and randomness of Nazi cruelty was such that at no point could one develop a strategy for survival; there was no safe way to behave, and even extreme cleverness couldn’t save you in the long run. All morality, justice and personal worth was erased.

With the clearing of Krakow, most of the action shifts to the labor camp, which is set in an extraordinary location at the base of a cliff. Looming above it is the opulent chateau of Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), from which invited revelers can look down upon the prisoners during glittering parties and, in shocking scenes that, again, are unlike anything previously seen, from the balcony of which the commandant randomly shoots helpless inmates as if taking target practice.

The commandant is a fascinating creation, as evil as any Nazi presented onscreen over the past 50 years, but considerably more complex and human than most. He is deeply and, he admits, disturbingly attracted to the young Jewish woman he keeps as his personal maid. Tellingly, both he and Schindler drink a great deal, but Goeth admires Schindler for not, unlike him, being a drunk. “That’s control,” he says, “and control is power.”

Schindler must use utmost diplomacy in dealing with Goeth and other top-ranking Nazis in order to get his way, gently suggesting that their murderous policies are bad for business and that to bestow a pardon confers even greater power on a ruler than constantly meting out death. Schindler is permitted to continue operating his Krakow factory as a “sub-camp,” which becomes a virtual haven for hundreds of Jews in that they are basically assured they won’t die there.

Still, with the Final Solution being implemented with ever-greater dispatch by 1944, Schindler must finally buy, with his tremendous war profits, the leftover Jews to prevent them from being shipped to Auschwitz. In a harrowing sequence, women he has arranged to rescue wind up at the extermination camp by mistake. For Schindler as well as the Jews, it remains a question of which will last longer, his money or the war.

After listening to Churchill’s announcement of the German surrender, Schindler delivers an extraordinary speech of his own in the presence of both Nazi guards and Jewish workers before fleeing with nothing more than a suitcase. Throughout the mesmerizing narrative so masterfully orchestrated in Zaillian’s faultlessly intelligent screenplay, there are many opportunities for heart-tugging, obvious plays for sympathy and hate, maudlin sentiments and cheap indulgences. Not only because Spielberg resisted every one of them, but also because this film is so different, and so much tougher, than anything else he’s done, if not forewarned as to its director’s identity, even a well-schooled critic could watch virtually the entire picture and never suspect it was Spielberg.

On reflection, some of the themes relating to greed, corruption and inadvertent heroism have been present in his work from early on, but nothing before has been anywhere near this deep or resonant. Images, moments and scenes stay in the mind and become even stronger, well after viewing the film.

Despite its 3 1/4-hour length, the film moves forward with great urgency and is not a minute too long for the story it is telling and the amount of information it imparts. It is, naturally, full of violence and death, but Spielberg makes this both memorable and somehow bearable by staging it all with abrupt, shocking suddenness, which adds to the feeling of arbitrariness.

The only debatable choice is the brief color epilogue, which depicts many of the surviving “Schindler Jews” filing by his grave in Israel accompanied, for the most part, by the much younger actors who have portrayed them in the film. This will have many viewers crying their eyes out, but it also smacks, on a certain level, of direct emotional manipulation, the only such instance in the work.

Another device that uses color is also questionable, that of a little girl whom Schindler notices and whose red coat stands out against the prevailing black-and-white. What this is supposed to signify is anyone’s guess, although it’s so minor that it doesn’t matter.

From top to bottom, the performances from the enormous cast are impeccable. Whereas most major stars would have wanted to tip the audience off early on that Schindler was actually a sensitive, caring guy underneath it all, Neeson leaves no doubt through most of the film that his character was driven foremost by profit. In a superlative performance, Neeson makes Schindler a fascinating but highly ambiguous figure, effectively persuasive and manipulative in one-on-one scenes where he’s determined to get what he wants, and finally rising to dramatic heights with his courageous and stirring farewell speech.

Kingsley must act within much more rigid constraints as his trusted accountant Stern, a man who feels he must never make a misstep. Role is reminiscent of Alec Guinness’ deluded Col. Nicholson in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”; in his compulsion to do a perfect job for Schindler, he often seems to forget that he’s working for the enemy.

The extraordinary Fiennes creates an indelible character in Goeth. With paunch hanging out and eyes filled with disgust both for his victims and himself , he’s like a minor-league Roman emperor gone sour with excess, a man in whom too much power and debauchery have crushed anything that might once have been good.

The dozens of small roles, many of which figure in the action only briefly, have been superbly filled by faces that invariably register immediately and with terrific effectiveness.

Shot mostly on location in Poland, the picture captures in exceptional detail the nightmare world of 50 years ago. Allan Starski’s production design blends imperceptibly with natural locations. This is a film that could have been made only in black-and-white, and yet it is solely because of Spielberg’s commercial stature that it was able to be made that way. Lensing by Janusz Kaminski, a young Polish-American cinematographer whose previous credits include “The Adventures of Huck Finn,” Diane Keaton’s made-for-cable “Wildflower” and some Roger Corman efforts, is outstanding. Lighting is mostly very simple, camera moves are agile and perceptive, and palette features many shades of gray rather than high-contrast black-and-white.

Michael Kahn’s editing moves with dynamic swiftness when desired and holds on scenes when required, making the running time seem shorter. John Williams’ score is atypical, especially in the context of his work for Spielberg, as it’s low-key, soulful and flecked with ethnic flavors.

Dedicated to the late Time Warner chairman Steve Ross , “Schindler’s List” has a deep emotional impact that is extraordinarily well served and balanced by its intelligence, historical perspective and filmmaking expertise.

• Production: A Universal release of an Amblin Entertainment production. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen, Branko Lustig. Executive producer, Kathleen Kennedy. Co-producer, Lew Rywin. Directed by Spielberg. Screenplay, Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Keneally. Reviewed at Universal Studios, Universal City, Nov. 18, 1993.
• Crew: Camera (b&w, Deluxe prints), Janusz Kaminski; editor, Michael Kahn; music, John Williams; violin solos, Itzhak Perlman; production design, Allan Starski; art direction, Ewa Skoczkowska, Maciej Walczak, Ewa Tarnowska, Ryszard Melliwa, Grzegorz Piatkowski; set decoration, Ewa Braun; costume design, Anna Biedrzycka-Sheppard; sound, Ronald Judkins, Robert Jackson; associate producers, Irving Glovin, Robert Raymond; assistant directors, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Marek Brodzki (Poland); casting, Lucky Englander, Fritz Fleischhacker, Magdalena Szwarcbart, Tova Cypin, Liat Meiron, Juliet Taylor. Original review text from 1993. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 195 MIN.
• With: Oskar Schindler - Liam Neeson Itzhak Stern - Ben Kingsley Amon Goeth - Ralph Fiennes Emilie Schindler - Caroline Goodall Poldek Pfefferberg - Jonathan Sagalle Helen Hirsch - Embeth Davidtz

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Schindler’s List Review

01 Jan 1993

195 minutes

Schindler’s List

Towards the end of Thomas Keneally's 'non-fiction novel' Schindler's Ark (as it is known in the UK), Liam Neeson's reformed profiteer Oskar Schindler reassures his trusted plant manager Itzhak Stern (Kingsley) that he will receive "special treatment" once he reaches the concentration camp. Stern demurs, recalling the directives from Berlin that have recommended 'special treatment' for all Jews. "Preferential treatment, then," Schindlers sighs, slightly piqued. "Do we have to invent a whole new language now?" Stern does not miss a beat. "I think so," he says.

That a mere movie - much less a motion p[icture authored by cinema's most successful crowd-pleaser - should flout Steiner's dictum would have horrified the post-War elite and remains controversial to this day. 'Schindler's List' is at once the most celebrated and most keenly criticised film in the Spielberg canon. During an awards season that resembled a victory lap, it became commonplace to talk of 1993 as Spielberg's annus mirablis - that year also spawned the monster hit 'Jurassic Park' - and of 'Schindler's List' as his 'Bar Mitzvah movie', the masterpice that signalled his emergence as an emotionally adult filmmaker.

And yet elements in the critical community cried foul, noting with disgust that the director of 'Jaws' can be found pulling the strings of an overwrought shower scene - where an expected gassing does not occur - or, smugly, that typically Spielbergian sentiment creeps into Schindler's over-emotional goodbye.

And that was the least of it. Among certain liberal and Jewish groups, the very notion of a holocaust movie with a blonde Nazi as the central protagonist, and 1,100 survivors taking centre stage when six million perished, sparked furious debate.

Despite Spielberg's avowed intention to check his "desire to entertain, 'Schindler's List' the movie remains true to the director's first, instinctive, reaction to Keneally's book - "a helluva story". This is no accident. Without the narrative sweep, the majority of the audience simply would not journey into the very darkest places Spielberg knows they must eventually face.

One of the most persistent canards of highbrow criticism is that greatart should not be easy. For the millions of people who watched the little girl in the red coat dumped onto a horrifying mountain of burning corpses, the idea that 'Schindler's List' should, infact, be more gruelling, that it should be less inspirational, that it should include more death, is hard to countenance.

A purely horizontal movie - one without a dramatically interesting protagonist or a focus on survivors - might satisfy the most searching complaints, but it would be almost impossible to stomach. (Spielberg is in fact so anxious to keep death gate-crashing into what is fundamentally a survivor's story that occasionally, as with the shower scene, he stumbles slightly.) As it stands, 'Schindler's List' which Spielberg thought would lose every dime of its $22 million budget, made an unprecedented $321.2 million at the box office. That kind of reach for a film of this nature is nothing short of a miracle.

When he made his famous call for silence, George Steiner could not have known that, by the last decade of the 20th century, Holocaust denial would have become a cottage industry, nor that 25 percent of young Americans would have little idea what the word 'holocaust' even meant. And he would not have dared imagine that the chilling language of Nazi directives would find echoes in the 'ethnic cleansing' once more taking place in Eastern Europe.

If no mere movie can become an "absolute good" - to borrow Stern's description of the list itself - then by 1993 a popular motion picture about the Holocaust had become an absolute necessity. That the picture born of this necessity was Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List' is enough to restore your faith in not just the medium, but also the human race itself.

Buy now on Amazon.

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Schindler's List (United States, 1993)

There have been numerous documentaries and dramatic productions focusing on the Holocaust, including a television mini-series which many consider to be the definitive work. As a result, in deciding to film Schindler's List , director Steven Spielberg ( Jurassic Park ) set an imposing task for himself. His vision needed to differ from that of the film makers who preceded him, yet the finished product had to remain faithful to the unforgettable images which represent the legacy of six million massacred Jews. Those who see this motion picture will witness Spielberg's success.

The film opens in September of 1939 in Krakow, Poland, with the Jewish community under increasing pressure from the Nazis. Into this tumult comes Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a Nazi businessman interested in obtaining Jewish backing for a factory he wishes to build. He makes contact with Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), an accountant, to arrange financial matters. For a while, there is no interest and nothing happens.

March 1941. The Krakow Jewish community has been forced to live in "the Ghetto", where money no longer has any meaning. Several elders agree to invest in Schindler's factory and the DEF (Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik) is born - a place where large quantities of pots are manufactured. To do the work, Schindler hires Jews (because they're cheaper than Poles), and the German army becomes his biggest customer.

March 1943. Germany's intentions towards the Jews are no longer a secret. The Ghetto is "liquidated", with the survivors being herded into the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp. Many are executed, and still others are shipped away by train, never to return. During this time, Schindler has managed to ingratiate himself with the local commander, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a Nazi who kills Jews for sport. Using his relationship with Goeth, Schindler begins to secretly campaign to help the Jews, saving men, women, and children from certain death.

Spielberg elected to film this motion picture in black-and-white, and it's impossible to argue with his choice. Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski has made effective use of shadow and light, meticulously limiting the application of hue. The opening scene is in color, as is the closing sequence (which features the surviving "Schindler Jews", each accompanied by the actor who played their character, placing a stone on their savior's grave). There are also two instances when color is allowed to bleed into the blacks, whites, and grays. One little girl's jacket appears red so that she stands out from the masses, and a pair of candles burn with orange flames. When color is used, it makes a point and an impression.

Schindler's List gives us three major stories and a host of minor ones. First and foremost, it tells the tale of the Holocaust, presenting new images of old horrors. These are as ghastly and realistic as anything previously filmed, and Spielberg emphasizes the brutality of the situation by not pulling punches when it comes to gore. The blood, inky rather than crimson in stark black-and-white, fountains when men and women are shot in the head or through the neck.

The second story is that of Oskar Schindler, the Nazi businessman who saved 1200 Jews from death. Schindler starts out as a self-centered manufacturer, concerned only about making money. He hires Jews because they're cheap, not because he likes them. But his perspective changes, and he risks losing everything to save as many lives as he can. His eventual lament that he couldn't save more is heartbreaking.

The third story belongs to Amon Goeth, the Nazi commander of Krakow, a man who teeters on the brink of madness. Despite his intense hatred for Jews, he is inexplicably attracted to his Jewish housekeeper, Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz). Disgusted by his feelings, he lashes out at her with a display of violence that is almost Scorsese-like in its blunt presentation. As written, Goeth could easily have become a conscienceless monster, but Spielberg works carefully to show unexpected depth and complexity to his character.

Often, the experiences of the minor characters provide the most lasting images. Helen's story is memorable, as is the plight of young Danka Dresner and her mother as they strive to avoid death while staying together. There's a Jewish couple that marries in the Plaszow camp, even though their chances of survival are dim, and a Rabbi who survives a close encounter with a Nazi gun.

Of course the Holocaust images are grim, but scenes of mass graves and exhumed bodies are not unique to Schindler's List . While it's impossible to deny their power, potentially more distubing are the instances of callous, individual murder. Spielberg doesn't spare his audience when it comes to sudden violence or the dehumanizing factors involved in such events. After all, Jews were viewed as "vermin." Schindler's List is replete with moments like this.

The acting is uniformly excellent. Liam Neeson's Schindler is shown in all his complexity, and his transformation is played with studied control. This is no sudden reversal of philosophy, but a matter of conscience that slowly dawns on the man. With a keen sense of Schindler's character, Neeson depicts the metamorphosis from self-centered businessman to driven messiah.

Ben Kingsley, whose Gandhi transfixed audiences years ago, has the movie's most understated role -- one that he acts with simple sincerity. Equally as impressive is Embeth Davidtz, who snares the viewer's attention during her limited screen time as Helen Hirsch, the object of Amon Goeth's twisted affection. Speaking of Goeth, Ralph Fiennes stuns with his intricate, savage portrayal of the Nazi commander, a man fascinated by power and murder. Fiennes' Goeth has the rare ability to both mesmerize and repulse, and this is a performance that will long be remembered.

Despite the grisly subject matter, this movie is essentially about uncovering a kernel of hope and dignity in the midst of a monstrous tragedy. The story of Oskar Schindler's sacrifices for the Jews sets this apart from other Holocaust dramas. Uncompromising in its portrayal of good, evil, and all the shades in between, Schindler's List offers a clear view of human nature laid bare: hatred, greed, lust, envy, anger, and, most important of all, empathy and love. Because this film touches us so deeply, the catharsis has a power that few -- if any -- other moments in film history can match. And that's what establishes this as a transcendent motion picture experience.

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Commentary: Why ‘Schindler’s List’ remains brilliant and troubling 25 years after its release

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“Schindler’s List” won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and director, and turned Steven Spielberg from a popular filmmaker (whose “Jurassic Park” was released the same year) into a more serious one. But it remains a quintessential problem movie, one that raised questions about genocide, historical memory and cinematic representation that remain, to this day, unresolved.

Twenty-five years after its initial release, Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” returns to theaters this week with digitally remastered picture and sound.

An epic-length adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s historical novel, the Universal film arrived in 1993 as not just a worthy cause, but a historical phenomenon. Released just a few months after the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it was poised to address a serious gap in historical representation. It was both a critical success and a popular one; made on a $22 million budget, it grossed $321.2 million worldwide.

“I think ‘Schindler’s List’ will wind up being so much more important than a movie,” said Walt Disney Studios then-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg at the time. “I don’t want to burden the movie too much, but I think it will bring peace on earth, good will to men. Enough of the right people will see it that it will actually set the course of human affairs.”

We are clearly not living in a world defined by Spielberg’s humanism, but the film remains a kind of litmus test for Hollywood moviemaking, asking whether it’s morally defensible to dramatize unspeakable horror and trauma via the language of mass entertainment.

The most obvious and durable critique of “Schindler’s List” is that the highest-profile Holocaust movie ever made (one designed to be used as an educational tool) is focused on a statistical anomaly – the Nazi who has a change of heart. Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is a war profiteer and bon vivant who initially sees Jews as cheap labor for his enamelware factory, but eventually, for reasons that remain somewhat opaque, decides to offer them a safe haven from certain death.

It’s a drama that invokes the Great Man theory of history, in which grand elements of fate become a matter of individual choice. It tells the story of the 6 million murdered by focusing on the 1,200 whom Schindler saved and, more precisely, on the savior himself.

As journalist Philip Gourevitch wrote in a pointed dissent in 1993,”The mindless critical hyperbole which has greeted ‘Schindler’s List’ suggests that powerful spectacle continues to be more beguiling than human and historical authenticity -- and that the psychology of the Nazis is a bigger draw than the civilization of the people they murdered.”

Far from a somber, forbidding museum piece, “Schindler’s List” uses all the tricks of Spielberg’s trade. It is perhaps inappropriately beautiful; Janusz Kaminski’s Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography alternates between wide-angle, deep-focus mise en scene and hand-held documentary-style realism, and he often lights Neeson like he was Humphrey Bogart. Despite its subject matter, the movie is never afraid of its own movie-ness. As a drama, the film is manipulative, but every scene contains something indelible.

It’s certainly a defensible approach, as film scholar Annette Insdorf said when it was released. “Oskar Schindler himself was a larger-than-life figure, who did indeed save over 1,100 Jews,” Insdorf said. “How? By manipulation. By a showmanship (not unlike Spielberg’s) that knows -- and plays -- its audience, but in the service of a deeper cause.”

According to Emory University Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, whose legal battle against a Holocaust denier was dramatized in the film “Denial,” Spielberg’s film was not made for those who had a strong sense of historical memory. “We were not the audience,” Lipstadt said in a recent interview. “It was the general public.”

She continues: “Is it the best depiction of the Holocaust in film? I don’t know. But did it reach a tremendous number of people who would otherwise not have been reached? Did it bring the story to countless people who no other filmmaker would have been able to reach? There is no question. So in terms of its impact, it certainly deserves its iconic status.”

Spielberg declined an interview for this piece, but at a recent 25th anniversary screening of the film, he said: “I have never felt, since ‘Schindler’s List,’ the kind of pride and satisfaction and sense of real, meaningful accomplishment. I haven’t felt that in any film post-‘Schindler’s List.’”

For the critic J. Hoberman, “Schindler’s List” has always been a problematic film. “He made a feel-good movie about the ultimate feel-bad experience,” he said. In 1994, in response to the film’s seemingly universal acclaim, Hoberman convened a symposium in the Village Voice for skeptical critics, academics and artists to wrestle with their complicated responses.

I have never felt, since ‘Schindler’s List,’ the kind of pride and satisfaction and sense of real, meaningful accomplishment.

— Steven Spielberg

For example, the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs argued that the movie, which largely focuses on Schindler’s relationships with his introverted Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) and the brutal Nazi commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), is all “about styles of manhood and how one deals with one’s lessers. Jews function as background and pawns of this dramatic contest.”

Hoberman, like many others, considers Claude Lanzmann’s 10-hour documentary, “Shoah,” to be the most cinematically and morally rigorous film ever made on the Holocaust. A series of direct interviews with witnesses — which include perpetrators and survivors of the death camps — Lanzmann’s film, shot in color, makes no attempt to re-create the past. Instead, the film is structured around a series of absences, forcing the viewer to imagine the horrors oneself.

“It’s devastating,” Hoberman says. “Because of Lanzmann’s strategy, where you have to imagine this yourself, you live it in a way you don’t when you’re watching it transformed into narratives, with characters and resolution. I suppose it’s utopian to imagine that people would learn from ‘Shoah’ rather than ‘Schindler’s List,’ but … I thought it was really unfortunate.”

Appreciation: Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ changed our understanding of the Holocaust — and altered documentary filmmaking »

Though I too find “Shoah” to be a monumental and essential experience, I am ultimately grateful for the existence of Spielberg’s film. “Schindler’s List” may not have brought peace on earth, but the phenomenon of the film helped ensure the Holocaust would remain a matter of public consciousness and provided a boon to historians. After the film, Spielberg established the USC Shoah Foundation, which has collected the testimonies of more than 55,000 Holocaust survivors.

As a movie made by a celebrated Jewish artist, it gave other filmmakers permission to treat the Holocaust as a subject of legitimate cinematic inquiry. Films as stylistically varied as Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and László Nemes’ “Son of Saul” all owe Spielberg a debt.

There are moments when I wish Spielberg had been gutsier, more willing to alienate his audience and gesture toward what is unrepresentable — and unspeakable. Late in the film, at the end of his climactic speech on the factory floor, Schindler asks for three minutes of silence to honor the memory of the countless victims. But Spielberg allows the silence to play out for less than 10 seconds before a rabbi begins intoning the kaddish .

Still, Lipstadt suggests, it is perhaps the only possible mass-market movie about the Holocaust. “Does it compare to a Lanzmann film? Of course not. Spielberg’s objective was to make a film that would reach millions, and he succeeded — without unduly cheapening the story.”

[email protected]

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IMDb Charts

Imdb top 250 movies.

1. The Shawshank Redemption

2. The Godfather

3. The Dark Knight

4. The Godfather Part II

5. 12 Angry Men

6. Schindler's List

7. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

8. Pulp Fiction

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

10. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

11. Forrest Gump

12. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

13. Fight Club

14. Inception

15. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back

16. The Matrix

17. Goodfellas

18. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

20. Interstellar

21. It's a Wonderful Life

22. Seven Samurai

23. The Silence of the Lambs

24. Saving Private Ryan

25. City of God

The Top Rated Movie list only includes feature films.

• Shorts, TV movies, and documentaries are not included
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