SCHINDLER'S LIST (The Truth about "Based on a True Story" Rhetoric in Movies

SCHINDLER’S LIST,
RHETORICAL REVIEW

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*“This is based on a True Story.”                        

Director, Steven Spielberg, says the movie is “based on a True Story”
Screenwriter, Steven Zillian, says the script is “based on a true story.”
Author, Thomas Keneally, says the book is “based on a true story.”


*I found the book, Schindler’s List, in the fiction section of Barnes & Noble.


Motivated by the American Screenwriter's Association claim that Schindler's List is one of the top ten
screenplays ever written, I decided to analyze the screenplay and learn from it.

Having viewed the movie a couple of times, read the book and combed the screenplay, I found myself less suspicious of the authenticity of nearly all the stated facts, particularly numerical and geographical, then I did the characterizations, action and dialogue. The latter being based on the testimonials of grateful survivers of the Holocaust whom worked as slave labors in Oskar Schindler's Nazi approved essentail industries factory.


It should be noted to those only seening the movie, that there were other essential industry factories that utilitized forced Jewish labor.   Oskar Schindler was unique in his efforts to retain his selected workers, rather than have them replaced by other healthy and skilled Jews.   In other words, there were Jews that would have replaced the specific Jews in his essential industries factory.   To that extent, termination of the war would have saved replaced Schindler Jews and his accontant, Itzak Stern, but not the specific ones dramatically saved.   Nonetheless, Julian Madritsch and his Supervisor Raimund Titsch also received the honor of Righteous Persons in Israel for their kind treating of Jews in their Essential Industries factory, also in Crawkow.   Noteworthy, Raimund Titsch added Jews to the Schindler list at the closing days of the war, perhaps saving replacing Jewish workers in the Madritsch factory.  The movie could have been called The Schindler, Stern and Titsch List.  (I don't think Itzhak and Oskar let alone the addition of Raimund was a title consideration.)


The movie, the script and the novel, offer three different characters called  Oskar Schindler:  the movie shows him uniquely shrewd; the screenplay shows more faults; the novel sheds even  more light on his womanizing and  latent alcoholism, three bouts in jail, and vomiting from his horseback view of  the Jews to the ghetto transport.  The latter was the  equivelenat of a Saul to Paul  effect (Recall a redemptive lightening strike of Saul while on horseback; thus becoming Paul).


The theme of the movie and the script happen at the top of the twenty first page of the script found on Daily Script.com.   Schindler tells his wife that his success is based on one fact: She guesses luck.  He corrects her with he word 'War.'   It's a perfect theme: the war made him rich, and its end made him poor, in terms of money.   Fact: he was an utter businesss failure in post World War II.  Nevertheless, the grateful Jews of his factory gave him a pension to keep him afloat.


The investigators of post world war II war crimes disparagingly saw Schindler and Madritsch as entraprenuers for the Nazis.  Schindler Jews saved both gentlemen as friends because of their humane treatment of Jews.  Schindler was extra-ordinary in his efforts to save those specific ones he Stern and Titsch identified.  in other words, arguably, both Schindler and Madritsch were saved from war crime trials by the Jewish workers of their respective  labor camps.

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Why did Steven Speilberg omit some very intriguing circumstances in the book and screenplay?
You've got to cut something.   Then again, the director chooses what to cut.   That decision is based on the purpose.


Hypothesis: the  rhetoric of guilt.

Simply put, we feel guilty when we should have done something and didn't do it, particularly if our omission caused an extra-ordinary horrible result, like the holocaust.   History tells us that the U.S. England and France openly purported to back up Poland  if  the Nazi's attacked.  Hitler countered with a ploy:  a pact with the Soviet Union,  offering to divide Poland with them if they forebear..   The U.S. England and France backed off.   The Nazi's attacked Poland.


Shamefully, we backed off our word to come to the aid of Poland should the Nazi's attack them.   The Nazi's won in two weeks and immediately began a low profile  "Final Solution" out of hatred for the capitalistic savy Jews, and to build a buffer between their arch-enemy Soviet Union after they broke the pact.  The cleansing of even non-Jewish Poles--perhaps the sixteenth century regional dominance by Poland was still historically remembered.


The hero Oskar Schindler pointedly separates Nazi's from German citizens.  Schindler makes Germans and German-Americans feel better, and Americans in general.   Identification with Schindler and Stern is to identify with European Americans and Jews as one--working together against horrible enemies.  Keeping the hero clean of too many defilements is necessary to cement the  identification effect.


When you are guilty, you have two options:  restitution or scapegoat.   The Nazi's chose the Jews as their scapegoat for economic problems of the past, (Shades of sentiment towards wall-street today).   Post WW II United Naions gave the Jews Israel as a form of restitution.   America and. England gave the Soviets more of Poland then offered by the Nazis' to switch to the Allie cause of defeating the Nazis.   Some old time Poles still admonish Roosevelt for it.


Michael Keneally slants his  view of Schindler's special choosing of laborers by saying Schindler's  adament contentions to the Nazi factory overseers was motivated by a personal penchant: They were his workers.  I work in a right to work state, and that view by management is the same purported as Schindler's: there is no implied nobility in the act.   Buying his workers back to work is noble, unless you see the downfall of the Reich and realize you better do something to save your hide.   Indeed, those were the suspicions of post war investigators.  It was the overwhelming gratefullness of the chosen Jews that persuaded the decision in Shindler's favor.   


Schindler's list is a reminder of our reason for supporting Israel.  It reinforces our indentification, bond  and duty to Israel in terms of continued restitution.

That's why extensions of the juicy defilements were secondary to the horrors of the holocaust, sympathy for the Jews and our identification with an apparent Semper Fi war hero.

This Analysis is based on a true story.
And I am now added to the list of those benefiting from the War:  certainly, we four are like Oskar Shindler.
If your respond by saying, "I knew Oskar Schindler and you are no Oskar Shindler."  My reply is a sincere, "Thank you." 


ozzie@oz7.com