Language:
English
Year of publication:
2015
Titel der Quelle:
Dapim; Studies on the Shoah
Angaben zur Quelle:
29,2 (2015) 114-133
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in motion pictures
;
Nuremberg War Crime Trials, Nuremberg, Germany, 1946-1949
;
Motion pictures History 20th century
;
Motion pictures
;
Documentary films History and criticism
;
Motion pictures Moral and ethical aspects
Abstract:
This article examines the general trajectory of the role film has played in relation to evolving historical and legal narratives of the Holocaust, a complex historical arc relative to other forms of representation of the Holocaust. The article begins by analyzing an American documentary film, Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), which functioned as a ‘self-evident’ witness during the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. The article then assesses American docudramatic depiction, which embedded documentary footage into fictional rendition, as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). From there, the article turns to analyzing Film Documents of Atrocities Committed by the German-Fascist Invaders (Kinodukumenty o zver-stvack nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov; hereinafter Film Documents of Atrocities) (1945), the Russian equivalent of Nazi Concentration Camps, and its contemporaries. Finally, the article turns to comparatively examining Sud Naradov, hereinafter The Judgment of the Nations (1946), the Russian feature film about the Nuremberg Trial. The historical evolution of representations of the Holocaust and Holocaust trials is important because these form part of the rhetoric of the ‘spectacular’ and ‘educational', especially within the context of World War II. This article is initially genealogical and deconstructive, analyzing the mechanics of film (as ‘language’ and rhetoric) as it depicts the ‘real’/’reel’ within differing national contexts (American and Russian), but the article also ultimately raises the possibility of a ‘poethics’ (to borrow and adapt Richard Weisberg's term) of production and reception in relation to the evolution of representations of the Holocaust and Holocaust trials. Ultimately, the article affirms the educational value of such representations, provided their audiences engage in a critical ethics of reception.
DOI:
10.1080/23256249.2015.1034980
URL:
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