Cheap Schindler's List (Full Screen Edition) (DVD) (Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes) (Steven Spielberg) Price

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"Schindler's List" chronicles Oskar Schindler's spiritual odyssey from war profiteer to humanitarian and hero. Winner of seven Academy Awards® in 1993, including Best Picture, this harrowing and heart-rending film is Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, and perhaps one of the finest and most important movies ever made. It depicts Schindler's ultimately successful attempt to rescue 1,100 Jews from Hitler's "Final Solution" by getting them to safety outside Poland.

Dynamic performances abound in this beautiful movie, Especially noteworthy are Liam Neeson as the suave Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as the monstrously depraved Nazi colonel, Amon Goeth, and Ben Kingsley as the dignified, principled Jewish prisoner Itzhak Stern.

"Schindler's List" is definitely not light entertainment! This beautiful movie allows viewers to feel like they're actually a part of one of the darkest, most horrific periods in history. (I'm sure this is the reason the film was shot in black-and-white, with only minor "colorized" bits included.) The story of the Holocaust needs to be told over and over again, in hopes that future generations can understand the horrors perpetrated on an entire race of people and prevent future occurrences. "Schindler's List" is perhaps one of the best and most effective vehicles for telling that story I've ever experienced.

Spielberg's masterpiece touches hearts and minds.....
Even though Steven Spielberg had made some of the most successful -- and profitable -- films in movie history (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, the Indiana Jones series), he was always perceived as a master craftsman but never as a "serious" director capable of making a grown-up film. This is an odd perception, considering that in addition to such crowd-pleasers as Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. (along with the plethora of projects he has been involved with as executive producer -- Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the Back to the Future trilogy), Spielberg had directed such serious fare as 1985's The Color Purple and 1987's Empire of the Sun, which deal with such weighty topics as race and the effect of war on children.

One film, released in late 1993 -- the same year that Jurassic Park set worldwide box office records -- changed that perception forever: Schindler's List.

Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German philanderer, member of the Nazi Party, and war profiteer whose desire to make money from Hitler's European war slowly but irrevocably morphed into a desire to save over a thousand of his Jewish labor force from the Nazis' genocidal "Final Solution," Schindler's List is a powerfully moving film. It not only never flinches from the inhumanity of Hitler's willing executioners -- there are all sorts of terrible things going on in here, including torture, manhunts, mass executions, and random acts of cruelty -- but it also touches on the central belief felt by Spielberg himself that decency and righteousness can triumph over even the most implacable tyranny and hatred.

Working from Steven Zaillian's adaptation of the fact-based novel by Thomas Kenneally, Spielberg chose to film Schindler's List in black and white because most of the documentaries, records and photographs he had seen were in black and white. As a result, whenever he does use color, especially in the key "Special Aktion" sequences where Schindler (Star Wars: Episode I's Liam Neeson) catches a glimpse of a single scarlet-clad girl as the Jews of the Krakow Ghetto are ruthlessly rounded up by SS troops. Spielberg draws the audience's -- and Schindler's -- attention on this single little girl by inserting the coat's red color into the otherwise stark shades of gray, black and white that dominate the film (which is the most expensive black and white movie made, displacing Darryl F. Zanuck's 1962 war classic The Longest Day).

Spielberg also chose to shoot Schindler's List on location in Krakow, Poland, where most of the movie takes place, painstakingly recreating the look and atmosphere of the period. A full scale set of Plaszow Labor Camp was built near the site of the real one from existing maps and blueprints, and a few scenes were filmed outside the infamous Auschwitz death camp.

Neeson's top notch performance is matched by those of Ralph Fiennes (SS Commandant Amon Goeth), Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern), and Caroline Goodall (as Schindler's long-suffering wife Emile), as well as Jonathan Sagalle and Embeth Davidtz. Fiennes in particular is outstanding as the homicidal and capricious SS commandant of the Plaszow labor camp, who thought nothing of picking up a rifle and using unwitting and unfortunate inmates for morning target practice.

Schindler's List won popular and critical acclaim, winning seven Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Music (by long-time collaborator John Williams), Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, and Art Direction. It is not only a fine example of filmmaking at its best, but it also serves as a memorial to the six million victims of the Holocaust, as well as a tribute to a flawed but righteous man who gave up his fortune and risked his life to save a handful of his fellow human beings from history's greatest criminal act.

The DVD presents Spielberg's 196 minute masterpiece on one double-sided disc in a digitally enhanced widescreen picture and 5.1 digital sound. The audio and video content are excellent, although fans of extra features may bemoan the lack of "the making of" behind-the-scenes featurettes present in other Spielberg-directed movies on DVD. Instead, there are the dicumentaries "Voices From the List" and "The Shoah Foundation Story."

Nevertheless, the recently-released Universal Studios Home Video DVD is a worthy addition to any serious film lover's collection.

**Schindler's List **
This film from Steven Spielberg was shot in black and white and is very effective as a film to portray what happened to the Jews in Germany/Poland etc.. from the ghettos to the concentration camps. The film is very realistic in its portrayal and the environment of that time in history of the 1930's and 1940's. This is a film that you may only want to watch once. It is an excellent film. The acting is very good, the reality of the killings is very graphic. The cinematography is excellent. The only reason I think that is a film to viewed once or twice in one's life is due to the depressing nature of the film. I think it is a film that younger generations (teenagers and some people in their 20's) should see because many are coming out of school without even knowing who Adolf Hitler was and what he had done. I think it's important that they see what occurred so a repeat of history does not happen. This is an important film, but not necessarily one you want to view over and over again.

Some other reviewers on this forum start bringing up that "other genocides occurred in history" and how come only this one is made into a film. I'm afraid folks that Spielberg didn't make an all encompassing film to include all of the past atrocities that happened in the past 1000 years. He focused just on the Holocast. Also it is just pure ignorance to deny that 5-6 million Jewish civilians were killed/murdered. Even if it was 10,000 Jews, it does not make it any better. It doesn't really matter if they were Jews or any other religion. The fact is that 6 million PEOPLE who were civilians were murdered. They were Germans, Polish, French and many other nationalities. It just happened they were of the Jewish faith that was targeted by the Nazis(Jews were used as a scapegoat to blame all of Germany's economic ills as a country on. The Nazis also killed and murdered gypsies too. The people (men, women and children) killed were white people (Jewish is not a race. It is a religion).
Actual documentation of what the Nazi's did is on film shot by British news cameras as the American and British soldiers entered these concentration camps throughout 1945. Disease was rampant in these camps due to all the mass graves and thousands of bodies that were left to rot (by the Germans) as the British bulldozers needed to bury these corpses. My father and grandfather were in the 2nd World War as part of the American and British invasion of Germany and witnessed it first hand. That's enough proof as far as I am concerned. Yes. Not all Germans were bad people, but there were enough of them to throw the world into a World War in 1939 and to allow this to go on just a few miles from their towns and villages.

This is a good film. Good coverage of a very bad time in world history.