Shoah
by Claude Lanzmann
Our Price: $149.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $97.87 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: William LubtchanskyDirector: Claude Lanzmann
Cinematographer: Dominique Chapuis
Editor: Anna Ruiz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language); German (Original Language); Hebrew (Original Language); Polish (Original Language); Yiddish (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 566 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-10-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video
Movie Reviews of Shoah
Movie Review: A monumental examination of mankind's darkest period
Summary: 5 Stars
Shoah is too exhaustive a study (9 1/2 hours in length) to be considered the definitive Holocaust documentary. In 30 minutes, Night and Fog, Resnais' searing masterpiece gives us a concise picture of that awful period with images that are etched in our minds with the psychic equivalent of a branding iron. Lanzmann's effort is not about images anyway. It is about words. Words from people who lived through the nightmare. That's not to say there aren't images here that lacerate the heart of any reasonable and compassionate human being. These images however, are not of walking skeletons, or corpses piled up and tossed into mass graves, but of people reliving moments too horrible for the brain to process rationally.
Lanzmann interviews a few Jewish workers at Chelmno, who somehow miraculously escaped the fate of all their relatives and friends in the gas vans. He interviews a barber who cut the hair of people who minutes later were gassed at Treblinka. He talks to Filip Muller, one of the Sonderkommando (special detail) at Auschwitz, a Czech Jew who had to clean out the gas chambers and cremate the bodies. He also interviews a former Nazi guard at Treblinka (who doesn't know his testimony is being recorded for posterity) as well as a former high Nazi official responsible for maintaining the Warsaw ghetto prior to it's liquidation, whose failure to take any responsibility is notable. Lanzmann talks to Greek Jews who were shipped to Auschwitz and lost families. He talks to Poles who now live in homes once owned by Jews, or who lived near Treblinka and could hear screams at night. One of the most poignant interviews is with Jan Karski, a former Polish resistance fighter and liason to the government in exile, whose job it was to spread the word of the Jewish extermination to a world that basically didn't care enough to do anything to end the slaughter before the war ended in Europe. Karski gives a heartrending account of a tour through the Warsaw ghetto. Finally, Lanzmann interviews 2 survivors of the Warsaw ghetto, resistance fighters who have the cruel memories forever etched on their faces.
Shoah was a monumental undertaking, and it really should be used as a tool to educate young people worldwide..educate them on the depths of depravity a so called civilized society can sink to under the right conditions, and educate them on what it means to have a conscience, and live with the moral, and ethical values necessary to be considered part of the human race.
Summary of Shoah
To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to make people realize that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary that not only records the facts, but bears witness. We are commanded "Never forget"; this film helps us to fulfill that mandate, reverberating with the viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful, both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful entering the mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, but talks with survivors, with SS men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6?million Jews.Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years tracking people down, cajoling them to talk, asking them questions they didn't want to face. When soldiers refuse to appear on film, Lanzmann sneaks cameras in. When people are on the verge of breaking down and can't answer any more questions, Lanzmann asks anyway. He gives names to the victims--driving through a town that was predominantly Jewish before Hitler's time, a local points out which Jews owned what. Lanzmann travels the world, speaking to workers in Poland, survivors in Israel, officers in Germany. He is not a detached interviewer; his probings are deeply personal. One man farmed the land upon which Treblinka was built. "Didn't the screams bother you?" Lanzmann asks. When the farmer seems to brush the issues aside with a smile, Lanzmann's fury is noticeable. "Didn't all this bother you?" he demands angrily, only to be told, "When my neighbor cuts his thumb, I don't feel hurt." The responses, the details are difficult to hear, but critical nonetheless. Shoah tells the story of the most horrifying event of the 20th century, not chronologically and not with historical detail, but in an even more important way: person by person. --Jenny Brown
Art House & International DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in Jewish Film
![Goodbye, Children ( Au revoir, les enfants ) ( Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] Image](/images/Goodbye-Children-Au-revoir-les-enfants-Auf-Wiedersehen-Kinder-NON-USA-FORMAT-PAL-Reg-4-Import-Australia-B000IHVFTU-X.jpg)
Goodbye, Children ( Au revoir, les enfants ) ( Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ]DVD
Best price: $29.99
The Golem (Restored Authorized edition)Release date: 2002-09-24; DVD
Best price: $10.81
Price in other shops:
Crossing DelanceyWarner Brothers; Release date: 2007-02-06; DVD
Best price: $11.63
Price in other shops:
The Ten Commandments (50th Anniversary Collection)Paramount; Release date: 2006-03-21; DVD
Best price: $15.62
Price in other shops:
Ben-HurWarner Brothers; Release date: 2004-06-01; DVD
Best price: $8.98
Price in other shops:
ExodusRelease date: 2002-10-15; DVD
Best price: $4.82
Price in other shops:
Funny GirlSony; Release date: 2001-10-23; DVD
Best price: $3.30
Price in other shops:
Annie HallRelease date: 2000-05-30; DVD
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Jazz Singer (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2007-10-16; DVD
Best price: $25.73
Price in other shops:
UprisingRelease date: 2001-12-18; DVD
Best price: $3.72
Price in other shops:
Similar DVD Movies
Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)Universal; Release date: 2004-03-09; DVD
Best price: $11.21
Price in other shops:
Shoah: The Complete Text Of The Acclaimed Holocaust Filmby Claude Lanzmann
Da Capo Press; Published: 1995-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.49
Price in other shops:
There Will Be BloodParamount; Release date: 2008-04-08; DVD
Best price: $8.04
Price in other shops:
Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambersby Filip Muller
Ivan R. Dee, Publisher; Published: 1999-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Triumph of the WillRyko Distribution; Release date: 2006-03-28; DVD
Best price: $19.65
Price in other shops:
HolocaustParamount; Release date: 2008-05-27; DVD
Best price: $17.70
Price in other shops:
The Nazis - A Warning from HistoryWarner Brothers; Release date: 2005-07-19; DVD
Best price: $25.14
Price in other shops:
Auschwitz - Inside the Nazi StateRelease date: 2005-03-29; DVD
Best price: $25.21
Price in other shops:
The Sorrow and the PityRelease date: 2001-04-24; DVD
Best price: $28.62
Price in other shops:
Night and Fog - Criterion CollectionRelease date: 2003-06-24; DVD
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops: