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ABSTRACT
This article investigates the process of identity construction through music in two feature films about the Shoah that deal explicitly with acts of resistance and solidarity: Schindler’s List (1993) and In Darkness (2011). It focuses on two aspects: how are perpetrators and victims characterized and distinguished by the soundtrack; and what music is used at key turning points of plots that deal with the survival, rescue, and death of Shoah-victims? An examination of the continuities and differences between the ways in which music is used in these two films may shed some light on on-going debates about the historical development of memory production.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Komor and Rohr, Arts, Holocaust and Taboo; Rohr and Gross, Pop – Avant-Garde – Scandal; Roebling-Grau and Rupnow, ‘Holocaust’ Fiktion.
2 Ward, “Holocaust Film in the Post-9/11 Era,” 30–1.
3 Ibid., 30
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Begegnungen und Unterbrechungen,” 162–3.
7 Ward, “Holocaust Film in the Post-9/11 Era,” 30–1.
8 Greiner, “Geschichtsmodellierende Funktion des Filmtons,” Paragraph 21–2.
9 Ward, “Holocaust Film in the Post-9/11 Era,” 30–1.
10 Ibid., 32
11 Ibid.
12 Loshitzky, Spielbergs Holocaust; Mintz, “The Holocaust at the Movies,” 125–158; Weiß, Der gute Deutsche.
13 Flückiger, Sounddesign - die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films, 178–180.
14 Schindler’s List, 00:00:26–00:01:45.
15 Burgoyne, The Hollywood Historical Film, 104; Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Geschichtsbilder im medialen Gedächtnis, 131.
16 Martinez, “Authentizität als Künstlichkeit,” 50.
17 Schindler’s List, 00:55:40–00:56:41. The prayer and the morning scenes are cross cut and drowned by a speech of Goeth in front of the SS-Soldiers, who will eventually execute the liquidation, reminiscent of Heinrich Himmler's prominent ‘Posen’-speech.
18 Schindler’s List, 00:19:20–00:29:20. To use klezmer-like melodies, instruments, and intervals that are understood as stereotypically ‘Jewish’ while showing enrichment and deception has an anti-Semitic subtext that has a long tradition in popular music especially in the genre of the musical, as Andrew Killick shows in his chapter: Killick, “Music as Ethnic Marker,” 185–201.
19 Schindler’s List, 01:10:52–01:13:17.
20 Frank Hentschel shows in his article how art-music mediates National Socialism as subtext in Hollywood films: Hentschel, “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland,” 266–79.
21 01:08:15–01:10:20; see http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Varshavski_Mark. A version of the song also appears in the Georg Gershwin Biopic Rhapsody in Blue as early as 1945.
22 This family story motive, with Schindler as the father, has been critically discussed by Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann. Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Geschichtsbilder im medialen Gedächtnis,133; 135.
23 Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Begegnungen und Unterbrechungen,” 162–3.
24 Schindler’s List, 02:56:46–03:01:51.
25 Williams also composed scores for films like Jaws (1978); Star Wars (1980); Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981); ET (1982); see Cooke, A History of Film Music, 456–67.
26 Pamela Potter showed in her book how musicologists of the Nazi-era promoted the idea of ‘German’ art music as a proof and legitimation of the superiority of the German culture and civilization; see Potter, Most German of the Arts.
27 In contrast to the implications of the sonically constructed picture, the Shoah, as described by Moishe Postone, was an irrational attempt to destroy the abstract power of capital, for which the Jews were held responsible. Postone, “Anti-semitism and National-Socialism,” 107.
28 Ostrowska, “I will wash it out,” 72.
29 Ibid., 65.
30 Schindler’s List, 00:10:15–00:10:45.
31 The connection of this repertoire with Nazi atrocities was played upon extensively in popular TV productions on the Shoah in the 1970s and 1980s, especially in Holocaust, produced in the USA, and Escape from Sobibor, produced in the UK. Before In Darkness, this way of using music in films about the Holocaust was already introduced in a feature film about the Jewish Uprising in Auschwitz, entitled The Grey Zone (2001). In all of these films including In Darkness, music is performed by victims of the Shoah, who are forced to do so.
32 Trümpi, Politisierte Orchester, 257.
33 In Darkness, 01:02:59.
34 His potential empathy for her was of course foreshadowed already by their first encounter, when he followed her father to their apartment in the beginning of the film to blackmail him for protection money and is surprised by the presence of cute children, that obviously do not fit his anti-Semitic prejudices.
35 In Darkness, 01:45:20.
36 Szabó-Knotik, “Musikland Österreich”; Schweiger, Österreichs Image im Ausland; Kerschbaumer, Begnadet für das Schöne.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elias Berner
Elias Berner studied Musicology at the University of Vienna. He is currently working for the research project ‘Telling Sounds’ at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. For his PhD Project ‘Soundtrack of the Shoah – Identity constructions of Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders through Music in Feature Films on National Socialism and the Shoah’ he was awarded a Junior Fellowship at the IFK (Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaft) from 2015–17.