As a kid I did not understand the need for movies like *Schindler's List*. Growing up Jewish I knew about the Holocaust. I knew about the Nazis and heard stories about stuff they did. But movies in my childhood brain were firmly just a form of entertainment. What entertainment is there if you are watching people suffer? Yet [as I explain in my other article](/articles/the_psycho-sexual_analysis_of_blender_dumbass) at about 14 I got to a rather strange point in my life, when everything dark and real became important. That's when I saw *Schindler's List* for the first time.  That's when a film that is not made for entertainment suddenly started making sense.

Even though *Schindler's List* is not a movie designed for entertainment, it would be silly to suggest that a [Steven Spielberg]() film could be entirely dull. It is Steven Spielberg we are talking about. His film-language intuition alone, as is, creates a lot of very utterly cinematic moments. And frankly, for a film like this, it is a good thing.

If I recall correctly, Spielberg did not storyboard the film. Now, I don't know if this is true for the entire picture, or just for the horrible stuff in it. But I heard somewhere that he didn't. That said, if that is true, Spielberg's cinematic intuition must be immaculate.

Take for example the introduction to Oscar Schindler ( [Liam Neeson]() ). That scene flows so good and the camerawork is on such a level that it must have been story-boarded. And if it wasn't, damn, this is some good film-making out there.

The flow of the entire picture is pretty much flawless, as far as I can see. Though there is a peculiar structure to it. If you compare this movie to anything else by Spielberg, you quickly find yourself a bit lost when it comes to the story. If say, in *E.T.* you have a straight forward narrative. You know who are who. And so on and so forth. *Schindler's List's* plot is way too complex to be streamlined into such a movie. So you may feel lost, when it comes to the structure at times. Yet, the execution of said plot, the flow between scenes, the way certain ideas are set-up and then built upon and ultimately paid off, is mesmerizing.

![The girl in red coat](/pictures/user_upload/blenderdumbass/girl_in_red_coat.png)

The famous example of that would be the girl in the red coat. As you probably know, the film was made in black and white. So a sudden introduction of color, makes you notice it. Spielberg uses this color queue as a focusing technique. We notice this tiny little girl in the middle of all this chaos as people are being shot dead left and right. She hides. We feel like she must have escaped death.

Yet some time later in the movie, this red coat returns to the screen. This time in a scene where dead bodies are being massively burned away. This is a true horror film stuff. This is the closest Steven Spielberg ever got to making a true horror scene. It goes on only for a minute, maybe even less. But it is horrifying. All those bodies are dug up and burnt on a massive open flame. And in those piles, we can see this red coat. And whatever remained of this tiny little girl.

If you know how I reacted to [The House That Jack Built](/reviews/The_House_That_Jack_Built), you know that I personally barely can withstand child-murder in movies. With adults I don't feel that as much. Gimme blood. I don't care. Something fundamentally switches on, or off or to a different wavelength, in my brain, though, when there is violence against children on screen. For that very reason It took me almost 5 days to watch *Schindler's List* for this review. I just kept not being able to handle the film.

Yet, with all that, I would not even try to re-watch *The House That Jack Built*. While Spielberg being Spielberg ( which means he knows to not show too much, when it is not needed ), made *Schindler's List* survivable.

It is the closest Spielberg got to actual horror. But [as I explained in my review of his daughter's debut picture](/reviews/please_don_t_feed_the_children_2025_shows_that_destry_spielberg_has_more_balls_than_her_father): he never did a true, scary horror film.

This is probably due to a number of factors. Spielberg seems to be a sentimental guy, who just doesn't want to fuck-up the audience. I would be utterly terrified if [Lars Von Trier]() or [Eli Roth]() would attempt a Holocaust movie. But Spielberg doesn't operate on those wavelengths. And then there is the experience he had with Bruce, the Shark.

On *Jaws* the mechanical shark they made for the movie didn't work half of the time, requiring from Spielberg to come up with ways to make the scene work without showing the shark. He adopted this mode of film-making for his other films, since. And even thought quite a lot of stuff is shown in *Schindler's List*, Spielberg is still using the *Jaws* technique here quite a lot as well. Most of the very bad stuff about the Holocaust is not shown, per se, but implied, through various methods. 

The Auschwitz scene for example, isn't about the gas chambers. Yet it is about walking a thin line towards making you understand the horror of the gas chambers, without explicitly showing anybody gassed. You see the smoke. You feel the tension. You are truly scared that Spielberg has the nerve to show it. But he doesn't.

This approach to keeping the film just about on the edge of watch-ability, I believe is a very good thing. There is just enough entertainment in between the horrible stuff, to make you relax a bit. Yes, it is also there to make you feel the contrast. To see the horrible stuff as horrible stuff. Otherwise, why on earth the first half of the film feels like an utter comedy. But this balanced approach goes a long way to make this film approachable. 

The film, with all the subject matter attached to it, proved to be a rather huge hit. Spielberg famously refused to get paid for making this movie. And frankly money isn't the point here. Being a hit means a lot of people saw it. A lot of people got to experience the horrors. A lot of people got to understand what the word *Holocaust* means.

If the movie would be too horrible, it would not have been a hit. Less people would have seen it. If the movie would be too light, the people who saw it, would not have understood the horrors. They would maybe understand them on some pseudo-intellectual level. But not on a gut-wrenching level. Not emotionally. Having specifically Spielberg, made the movie just about perfectly balanced for it to do actual good in the world.

**Happy Hacking!!!**