POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities Volume 32, No
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humanities Volume 32, No. 2 Winter/Spring 2013 ISSN-0277-9897 Special Issue: Holocaust and Film Guest Editors: Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan and Boaz Cohen Contents Introduction Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan and Boaz Cohen 3 The “Sub-epidermic” Shoah: Barton Fink, the Migration of the Holocaust, and Contemporary Cinema NATHAN ABRAMS 6 Indirected by Stanley Kubrick GEOFFREY COCKS 20 A Filmmaker in the Holocaust Archives: Photography and Narrative in Peter Thompson’s Universal Hotel GARY WEISSMAN 34 The Missing Links of Holocaust Cinema: Evacuation in Soviet Films OLGA GERSHENSON 53 Jews, Kangaroos, and Koalas: The Animated Holocaust Films of Yoram Gross LAWRENCE BARON 63 "Was Bedeutet Treblinka?”: Meanings of Silence in Jean-Pierre Melville’s First Film MARAT GRINBERG 74 "What do you feel now?' The Poetics of Animosity in Fateless” BRIAN WALTER 91 Volume 32, No. 2 1 Post Script Exhibiting the Shoah: A Curator's Viewpoint YEHUDIT KOL-INBAR 100 Book Reviews The Holocaust & Historical Methodology REVIEWED BY JOANN DIGEORGIO-LUTZ 111 The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema REVIEWED BY ALEXIS POGORELSKIN 113 Review Essay The Filmic and the Jew: A Re-view A Discussion of Nathan Abram's The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema REVIEWED BY ITZHAK BENYAMINI 115 Volume 32, No. 2 2 Post Script INTRODUCTION YVONNE KOZLOVSKY GOLAN AND BOAZ COHEN This issue is dedicated to the fascinating Claude Lanzmann claimed that these could subject of film and the Holocaust. It includes not capture the essence of the Holocaust new research and new viewpoints on the and failed to interpret the action into visual presence of the Holocaust in western culture language. Lanzmann did not believe in Ho- and audiovisual media. The dawn of the 21st locaust films as transmitters of memory, but century and the decline of postmodernism preferred the “authentic” form of the testi- is an appropriate time to reappraise the mony. Yet, one cannot ignore the fact that a place of the Holocaust in movies from the visual language and narrative did develop early 1950s to current cinema. This issue and that as time went on, documentaries and presents the reader with a broad spectrum feature films captured the audience’s atten- of multidisciplinary work by scholars from tion and became agents of public, personal the social studies, philosophy, literature, the and international discourse on the Holocaust arts, history and film, and media studies. and its transmission. At the center of this volume stands the The wide range of possibilities of film issue of the representation and depiction can be seen from We Shall Never Die (1959), of the Holocaust in film. Is it represented which uses the medium of animation, usu- as an historical event per se, or did it meta- ally associated with light entertainment, to morphose into an iconic entity used also in create simulacra of the Holocaust narrative places that have no connection at all to the and its uses and abuses as a prosthetic Holocaust? We also focus on nationality, memory. Lawrence Baron’s essay, on one polity and time as variables impacting its end of this spectrum, discusses the work of representation in films made in the USSR, Yoram Gross, Australia’s most successful USA, Israel, France, Hungary and Australia director of animated films for children and at different moments of their history. a teenage survivor of the Holocaust. Gross The use of the Holocaust in film and was a pioneer in depicting genocide and war its conceptualization as the ultimate evil on through animated films for younger chil- one hand, and its narration as a blueprint dren. He typically represents the persecution for freedom vs. tyranny and hate, on the of the Jews in symbolic images and casts the other, constructed the Holocaust as a lieu enemy broadly as ecocide, imprisonment, de memoire, an ultimate site of memory and or war. On the other end of this spectrum, a repository of historical memories. This is Nathan Abrams argues, in an essay on the true both for those who lived through it and “Sub-epidermic” Shoah, that “the Holocaust for those who were born years later. This is no longer taboo as a subject for humor, can be seen in the search for identity as in abuse, and misrepresentation.” He claims Melville’s Le Silence de la mer (1947-49), in that this “normalization” or “casualiza- self-recrimination as in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), tion” can be explained by generational and and in the effort to decipher the Nazi “sys- cultural shifts in American society. tem” as in Universal Hotel (1986). The inherent possibilities and chal- Representation of the Holocaust in film lenges of visual representation of the Holo- has come a long way since the early camp caust can be seen in the commentaories by liberation films shot and edited in the 1940’s. Weissman and Kol-Inbar. Gary Weissman Volume 32, No. 2 3 Post Script discusses Peter Thompson’s Universal Hotel complished by the Jews but to the Jews. (1986) and shows how the film “encour- Olga Gershenson discusses the absence of ages viewers to think critically about the Jews in Soviet evacuation films. Although relationship between photography and close to a million and a half Jews escaped narrative in visual depictions of historical to the inner reaches of the USSR during the events.” He claims that it is a “meditation” Holocaust, they are glaringly absent from on how we explore “a past that lies behind the Soviet feature films depicting evacua- a closed door.” Yehudit Kol-Inbar discusses tion. Gershenson claims that dealing with the decision-making processes involved in this Jewish experience would have entailed planning the new Museum of Holocaust emphasizing “a special position of Jews as History at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; the Jew- the targets of Nazi violence,” unacceptable ish Pavilion at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State in the Soviet depiction of the war. “The Ho- Museum, Poland; and two major exhibitions locaust was universalized by subsuming it at the Yad Vashem Museum. She shows how into the general Soviet tragedy, with Jews visual imagery and digital visual media euphemistically labeled ‘peaceful Soviet emerged as the major mode of transmitting citizens.’” the history of the Shoah. A parallel trend is one in which, in the A noticeable trend in the work dis- words of Nathan Abrams, “the Holocaust cussed in this issue is the universalizing of has become normalized or casualized in the Holocaust and its concerns and lessons, film.” It appears in jokes, puns and in places either by excising the specific Jewish content where it is totally unnecessary for the nar- while leaving in general values like compas- rative or the message of the film. There is sion, empathy and solidarity (Gross) or by no explicit mention of the Holocaust but using Holocaust imagery to denote evil, the educated viewer can easily discern barbarity and brutality (Kubrick). While the the code. This is, according to him, a sub- overt choice of the filmmakers was to avoid epidermic presence of the Holocaust. It is here direct reference to the Holocaust and the that we can see a generational shift: A new genocide of the Jews, many of our contribu- generation of American Jews born after the tors claim that these works are informed by Holocaust is producing films after the end the very Jewish concerns aroused by the Ho- of the cold war, expressing their Jewishness locaust. Geoffrey Cocks examines the work and freely using Holocaust-related language of Stanley Kubrick and claims that although and icons. Kubrick did not make any Holocaust films, It is indicative that this collection has he “sublimated his feelings about the Ho- almost no essay on “proper” historical Ho- locaust into his films…Nazis, Jews, and the locaust films. One describes a documentary Holocaust lurk in Kubrick’s films indirectly.” work (Weissman on Thompson’s Universal Cocks discusses Kubrick’s The Shining as an Hotel), but even then the story is recounted as example of Holocaust concerns embedded in a quest or an odyssey by the filmmaker. One his work. In like manner, Marat Grinberg’s can say that there is a shift from producing essay focuses on French director Jean-Pierre films that strive for historical credibility such Melville and his 1947 filmLe Silence de la mer. as Schindler’s List to films giving an openly Grinberg claims that, contrary to assertions subjective view of the events such as Fateless. that Melville was totally disconnected from Brian Walter analyzes director Lajos Koltai’s Jewish culture and concerns, his Jewishness Hungarian Holocaust film Fateless, which, “was at the very core of his artistic thinking,” he argues, makes “no pretenses to simple, as was “his comprehension of the destruc- objective witness” in its depiction of Holo- tion of Jewish life” in the Holocaust. Unlike caust survivor György Köves’s experiences. these examples that come from western Walter shows how the film challenges norms culture, we should remember that in the of objectivity and authenticity in presenting Soviet Union universalization was not ac- survivor testimony in film. AlthoughFateless Volume 32, No. 2 4 Post Script is based on survivor testimony, its “frank and Israel, which will be of use to gradu- subjectivity…raises the complex problem of ate and undergraduate students as well as the witness’s authority” and challenges its scholars of film. The critical review surveys historical credibility. In like manner, it seems the various sections of the book and notes from the contributions to this volume, that its importance for film and culture research. researchers are less interested now in films The review essay in this section relates that are historical, “objective” reenactments to Nathan Abrams’s new book, The New Jew of chapters of the Holocaust and are more in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in attentive to works that demonstrate the Ho- Contemporary Cinema (New Brunswick NJ: locaust as a cultural icon of western culture.