Schindler's List
Janusz Kaminski, ASCAfter two decades of spectacular success that earned him a reputation as Hollywood's top maker of fantasy and action-adventure fare, Steven Spielberg stunned the world's moviegoers with Schindler's List, a harrowing depiction of the Holocaust. Although Spielberg had previously tackled serious material with The Color Purple, nothing on his resumé had prepared viewers for the harsh realism of Schindler's, which forever altered audiences' perception of the director as simply a master entertainer. The Academy of Arts and Sciences honored Spielberg with his first Best Director Oscar at the 1994 ceremony, which also served as a coming-out party for Polish cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who took home a statuette for his impeccable black-and-white photography. The film also garnered five other Oscars, including those for Best Picture, Film Editing, Original Score, Art/Set Direction and Adapted Screenplay, amid a grand total of 12 nominations.
In a January 1994 AC interview, Kaminski detailed a key sequence that summed up the film's emotional impact: "There was a scene at Birkenau, where a group of women are being led into a transfer room. They've been stripped of their identity and deprived of their privacy. Like those women, we don't know if they are going to live or die. They've been told that they'll be showered and clothed in uniforms. But as we all know, very few got what they were promised. The Nazis liked to create a facade of normalcy to avoid a panic among the prisoners. Also remember that during the transport to Auschwitz and Birkenau, these people were living for days in tightly packed cattle cars, without food or ventilation. Spielberg had some specific ideas about how he wanted to handle this scene photographically. I placed single light bulbs in the ceiling and along the walls. When the women were led into the shower room or gas chamber, all of the lights suddenly shut off, leaving the women in complete darkness. There were screams for five to 10 seconds until a strong spotlight came on and pointed toward the camera. The light outlined the nude women crowded next to each other, holding each other for comfort, not knowing whether they'll live or die. All of a sudden, the sprinklers came on and the water sprayed out. It's the most amazing scene. It's so emotional that even now, it's tough for me to hold a strong voice.
"What Steven did was to mimic the Nazi sadism so that the audience, like the women, are in the dark, afraid for what might happen. It was not manipulative or sentimental. It was real. And the crew's reaction on the set was hatred — hatred for the ignorance that could do this to a group of people. But look, it's still happening in the former Yugoslavia. Same stuff, 50 years later. What did we learn? Nothing. That's the purpose of the movie — to remind people that it's so easy to slip into the same thing."
© 1999 ASC