With next week's video release of Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning "Schindler's List," interest in its central figure will once again be intense.
HBO Video has anticipated that interest by releasing the British documentary "Schindler" (81 minutes, $49.99), produced, written and directed by Jon Blair and drawing on the book by Thomas Keneally, which also inspired the Spielberg movie. "Schindler" has been seen on PBS, but should attract an even wider audience on video.The tape, narrated by Dirk Bogarde, recalls many key scenes from "Schindler's List" but has the advantage of being able to explore Oskar Schindler's life before and after World War II. We learn that he was from an unremarkable Catholic family in Czechoslovakia, whose next-door neighbor was a rabbi with two sons, and that he adored being the center of attention.
Accordingly, we are told, Schindler developed a flamboyant style that served him well when it came to dealing with the Nazi power structure. As a businessman with a penchant for black-market goods, he moved easily among the German officials, whom he bribed for special considerations. Indeed, he even acted as a spy for the Nazis.
As critics of the Spielberg movie have frequently noted, the man was far from a saint. He indulged himself in alcohol, gambling and women, behavior that is not denied or defended by his widow, Emilie, interviewed here, except when she shrugs and says that such a man is not to be changed.
Yet something set Schindler apart from his countrymen. At his enamelware plant in Krakow, Poland, he shielded his Jewish workers from the SS, again using bribes of black-market items so that they could travel from the ghetto to his factory unmolested. On the day the ghetto was emptied and its residents shot or shipped away (depicted indelibly in "List"), Schindler had his workers sleep in safety for days in the factory.
A dozen witnesses who were close to this event and the horrors that followed recall the dark days of Nazi oppression. They also recall the unspeakable Amon Goeth, the "Butcher of Plaszow," another central character in "List." This man's brutal treatment of his work-camp prisoners is chillingly defended by his former mistress, Ruth Kalder. Although reminded by an interviewer of terrible deeds, she says Goeth did not "hate the Jews" and treated them no worse than did other Germans.
Also heard on the tape are Helena Hirsch, Goeth's maid, who credits Schindler with saving her life by winning her in a card game with Goeth.
After the war, Schindler did not fare well. For a time he lived in Argentina, but his business there failed. He then returned to Frankfurt after splitting up with his wife. In 1962 he visited Israel and was treated as a hero - an event seen here only in still photos. He continued to visit the country over the years, and upon his death in 1974, at the age of 66, he was given a Christian burial there.
Just as with the Spielberg movie, the inhumanity of the Holocaust described here is nearly overwhelming. Plenty of old film footage exists that attests to the horror, but Blair has chosen his clips with care. Although we glimpse a field of corpses and clusters of emaciated survivors, the emphasis is not on visual shock but on the memories of the witnesses, seen in carefully composed and flatteringly lit closeups.
Schindler, as this worthy documentary insists, may not have been a saint, but at a certain time and place, he did perform a miracle.
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- Dennis Hunt
(Los Angeles Times)
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(United Press International)
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- Dennis Hunt
(Los Angeles Times)
THE CISCO KID - Jimmy Smits and Cheech Marin are Cisco and Pancho in writer-director Luis Valdez' zesty retelling of the O. Henry classic short story about the "Robin Hood of the Old West." There's a little Zorro and Lone Ranger here, too, as well as a sharp resemblance at times to Don Quixote. This version harks back to the origins of the Cisco Kid when he and Sancho meet while facing a firing squad and traces his early adventures during the Mexican revolution. Exhibiting a fine comic touch, Smits' Kid is a kidder, a vain womanizer on one hand, a jaunty man of action on the other. It's a perfect role for him. Cheech is his usual wisecracking self, his act toned down a bit. Plenty of action in this made-for-cable yarn, a fair amount of humor, an authenticity that's not always there but lack of same never gets in the way. It won't make oldtimers forget Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carillo, but it's a fun outing. 1994. 95 minutes. Turner Home Entertainment.
- Jack Wilkinson
(United Press International)