1993 Film
Release date: December 15, 1993 (USA)
Running time: 195.5 minutes
Featured song: Por una Cabeza
Awards: Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Best Director, Academy Award for Original Music Score, Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Film, Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Golden Globe Award for Best Drama Film, Academy Award for Film Editing, Academy Award for Best Art Direction, BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture, Golden Globe Award for Best Director - Film, National Board of Review Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, BAFTA Award for Best Direction,BAFTA Award for Best Editing, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film, London Film Critics Circle Award for Director of the Year,BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay, Adapted, BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor,National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director, Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography, DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film, Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Director, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film, PGA Producer of the Year Award for Motion Picture Producer of the Year, Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinema Writers Circle Awards (Spain) for Best Foreign Film, London Film Critics Circle Award for Film of the Year, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Director
Description
In 1939, the Germans move Polish Jews to the Kraków Ghetto as World War II begins. Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German businessman from Moravia, arrives in the city hoping to make a fortune as a war profiteer. Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, lavishes bribes upon Wehrmacht and SS officials. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to run such an enterprise, he gains a collaborator, Itzhak Stern, an official of Krakow's Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the Jewish business community and the black marketers inside the ghetto. The Jewish businessmen lend Schindler money in return for a share of products produced. Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys newfound wealth and status as "Herr Direktor", while Stern handles administration. Schindler hires Jewish Poles instead of Catholic Poles because they cost less. Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern ensures that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war effort, saving them from being transported to concentration camps or killed.
SS-Lieutenant (Untersturmführer) Amon Goeth arrives in Kraków to oversee construction of the Płaszów concentration camp. Once the camp is completed, he orders the liquidation of the ghetto and Operation Reinhard in Kraków begins, with hundreds of troops emptying the cramped rooms and arbitrarily murdering anyone who is uncooperative, elderly or infirm. Schindler watches the massacre and is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Goeth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, Schindler continues enjoying SS support. Schindler bribes Goeth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers, so that he can keep his factory running smoothly and protect them. As time passes, Schindler tries to save as many lives as he can. As the war shifts, Goeth is ordered to ship the remaining Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Schindler prepares to leave Kraków with his fortune. He finds himself unable to do so, however, and prevails upon Goeth to allow him to keep his workers so he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, away from the Final Solution. Goeth charges a massive bribe for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers to be kept off the trains to Auschwitz.
"Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in Płaszów, being included means the difference between life and death. Almost all of the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site. The train carrying the women is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz. Schindler bribes the camp commander, Rudolf Höß, with a cache of diamonds in exchange for releasing the women to Brinnlitz. Once the women arrive, Schindler institutes firm controls on the SS guards assigned to the factory, forbidding them to enter the production areas. He encourages the Jews to observe the Sabbath. To keep his workers alive, he spends much of his fortune bribing Nazi officials and buying shells from other companies; he never produces working shells during the seven months his factory operates. He runs out of money just as the Wehrmacht surrenders, ending the war in Europe.
May 8, 1945: The workers and Germans listen to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's speech of the Unconditional Surrender of Germany to the Allies. As a Nazi Party member and a self-described "profiteer of slave labor", in 1945, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army. Although the SS guards have been ordered to kill the Jews, Schindler persuades them to return to their families as men, not murderers. In the aftermath, he packs a car in the night and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter explaining he is not a criminal to them, together with a ring secretly made from a worker's gold dental bridge and engraved with a Talmudic quotation, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire". Schindler is touched but deeply ashamed as he leaves, feeling he could have done more to save lives, such as selling his car and Golden Party Badge.
The Schindler Jews are awakened by sunlight the next morning. A Soviet dragoon announces that they have been liberated by the Red Army. The Jews walk to a nearby town in search of food.
After a few scenes depicting post-war events such as the execution of Amon Goeth and a summary of what happened to Schindler in his later years, the Jews are shown walking to the nearby town. The black-and-white frame changes to one in color of present-day Schindler Jews at Schindler's grave site in Jerusalem, where he wanted to be interred.[3] A procession of now-elderly Jews who worked in Schindler's factory set stones on his grave—a traditional Jewish custom denoting gratitude to the deceased. The actors portraying the major characters walk with them. Ben Kingsley is accompanied by the widow of Itzhak Stern, who died in 1969. A title card reveals that at the time of the film's release, there were fewer than 4,000 Jews left alive in Poland, but more than 6,000 descendants of the Schindler Jews throughout the world. In the final scene, Liam Neeson places a pair of roses on the grave and stands over it.
Trailer
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