Page 57 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three

films about the Łódź ghetto

— Bartosz Zając

Right after I started writing this text I began to have cer-
tain doubts. Concentration on matters of style, form or
simply aesthetics is widespread and in most cases ab-
solutely justifiable in film studies discourse. In our eval-
uation of a film, we point out innovative narrative
methods, masterful direction, breaking storytelling con-
ventions etc. This is the way the film critics – cinephiles
by definiton – work, lifting avantgarde films onto
a pedestal to map out new roads in the evolution of cin-
ema. However, the description of films and documen-
taries about the Holocaust from such a perspective
seem unethical. Should we pass sentence on the value
of those pictures by using aesthetical categories; should
we analyze the form applied to the traumatic events of
WWII?
The problem of representation of the Holocaust in
the cinema has a rich history of films of diverse genres
and themes, critical commentaries and aesthetical the-
ories. The Holocaust films constitute a large category of
movies which tell the multi-layered story of the Holo-
caust. They include compilation documentaries, inter-
views with the survivors, classical Hollywood feature
films, comedies, musicals and experimental films. His-
torians and theorists have long been arguing about
method used to speak about the Holocaust. Which po-
etics should be the one entitled to speak about the un-
speakable?
A storm of polemics arose at the end of 1970s after
1 —
See: Miriam Bratu Hansen, the TV series Holocaust was broadcast in the US. Its au-
Schindler’s List is not Shoah: thors were criticized for using the classical convention
The Second Commandment,
Popular Modernism of realistic cinema and melodrama, just as Steven
1
and Public Memory Spielberg was for his Schindler’s List (1993) . Similar

Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto 55