Genocide (1982)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Arnold Schwartzman

Writers:

Martin Gilbert (written by) and
Marvin Hier (written by) ...

Release Date:

19 April 1984 (Australia)

Genre:

Documentary | History

Plot Keywords:

Animated Sequence | Concentration Camp | 1930s | Holocaust | 1940s

Awards:

Won Oscar.

Cast

Elizabeth Taylor	...	Narrator (voice)
Orson Welles	...	Narrator (voice)
Simon Wiesenthal	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Neville Chamberlain	...	Himself (archive footage)
Winston Churchill	...	Himself (archive footage)
Dwight D. Eisenhower	...	Himself (archive footage)
Josef Goebbels	...	Himself (archive footage)
Hermann Göring	...	Himself - at Nuremberg Trials (archive footage)
Rudolf Hess	...	Himself (archive footage)
Heinrich Himmler	...	Himself (archive footage)
Adolf Hitler	...	Himself (archive footage)
Ralph Metcalfe	...	Himself - in 100m Final at the 1936 Olympics (archive footage)
Martinus Osendarp	...	Himself - in 100m Final at the 1936 Olympics (archive footage)
Jesse Owens	...	Himself (archive footage)
Pope Pius XII	...	Himself (archive footage) (as The Pope)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt	...	Himself (archive footage)
Joachim von Ribbentrop	...	Himself - at Nuremberg Trials (archive footage)

Runtime:

90 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

New Zealand:R13 | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Austria

Company:

Simon Wiesenthal Center

Trivia:

The film was originally designed to be presented in a multi-screen format at a Los Angeles museum, with one 35mm projector, two 16mm projectors, and 18 slide projectors. Only after completion was it reformatted to be shown in standard film theaters.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The 54th Annual Academy Awards (1982) (TV)

Takes some historical liberties, but for a good cause

If only one documentary film of the holocaust should be preserved, this is probably it. Riveting in its content, rich in its emotion, and outstanding in its technique, this film flirts with greatness. Indeed, the moving narration provided by both Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles is among the most impassioned, most heartfelt, in cinematic history.

Alas, despite its overall excellence, the film must be "marked down" because of its apparent disregard for internal consistency. Don't get me wrong - everything (and more) of what it recounts is factually true. And all of the documentary evidence it presents is as real as the screen you're looking at. No, what bothered me was the tendency over and over again for the filmmaker to use photographic material inaccurately. So, for example, to help paint the picture of the Holocaust on the Eastern Front, we are presented with multiple black and white photographs of hangings. The trouble is that many of the photos were neither of Jews nor of the Holocaust. They were of partisans and commissars (also hunted and slaughtered by the Nazis). Likewise, while the narration describes an 'aktion' in Lithuania, the photos we see are from assaults on Jewish women in Lvov. I could go on, but think you get the idea.

Again, please don't misinterpret me. I am not at all challenging the general veracity of the film nor the importance of its message. My quarrel is, simply, that too many of the illustrations used to complement the narrative are out of place and inaccurate. By and large, this probably makes little difference to things overall (whether someone was murdered in 1943 or 1944, and whether by hanging or by a bullet to the back of the neck, is irrelevant in the total enormity of the Holocaust). However, given the reality of revisionists and deniers, the last thing one would want to do, especially when making a film that in some sense "proves" the Holocaust, is to give the disbelievers any ammunition for their perverted cause. Frankly, I'm distressed by such careless selection and use of photos. I fear that this could cost the film credibility - credibility in the eyes of those who most need to have them opened.