Schindler’s List Cut by Cut: Part 1

 
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, tells the story of a Ger­man busi­ness­man who devises a plan to save over a thou­sand Pol­ish Jews from anni­hi­la­tion by the Nazis.  The picture’s nar­ra­tive, act­ing, music and emo­tional impact are all out­stand­ing. For obvi­ous rea­sons, one of our favorite aspects of this movie is the beau­ti­fully com­posed and lit black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Janusz Kamin­ski. But the editing.….wow! Michael Kahn who hap­pens to be the most-nominated edi­tor in Acad­emy Awards his­tory (eight nom­i­na­tions) received the the Best Edit­ing top recog­ni­tion for this movie (and also for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan).

Through­out Schindler’s List, the story is pieced together with the use of “par­al­lel edit­ing”, or “cross-cutting”, a cin­e­matic con­ven­tion in which “two or more con­cur­rent scenes are inter­wo­ven with each other.” Kahn and Spiel­berg suc­cess­fully illu­mi­nate the hard­ships of the Jews and the oppos­ing com­fort and opti­mism of Schindler and the Nazis in Poland through this convention.

Why this blog post? In 2012 the Cin­ema Edi­tor Mag­a­zine pub­lished a great arti­cle where the author dis­sected, cut-by-cut, one of the most impor­tant scenes of “Schindler’s List.” Last week we rented the DVD, went back to the arti­cle, and cre­ated screen grabs of each of the cuts in order to bet­ter under­stand Kahn’s edit­ing. There are so many cuts (28) that we will split this post in two. We wanted to post the entire sequence but due to copy­right issues, we can’t.

Schindler (Liam Nee­son) and Itzhak Stern (Ben Kings­ley) fal­sify doc­u­ments and cre­ate a list of names to ensure that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble are deemed “essen­tial” by the Nazi bureaucracy.

Cut 1 Extreme close-up of type­writer keys pound­ing out three names:  as the screen­play puts it, “the let­ters the size of build­ings, the sound as loud as gunshots.”

Cut 2 Medium shot of Stern typ­ing; cam­era tracks with Schindler pac­ing past him, recit­ing the names of Poldek Pfef­fer­berg, his close crony among the Jews, and Poldek’s wife, Mila.

Cut 3 Extreme close-up: “Pfef­fer­berg” being typed.

Cut 4 Medium shot: Schindler giv­ing another name. Pan right to include Stern at typewriter.

Cut 5 Extreme close-up of the name “Stagel” being typed.

Click to keep reading

Cut 6 Medium shot: Schindler telling Stern he wants to put his investors on the list; pan back and forth with Schindler.  Stern, apolo­getic, has typ­ing prob­lems, mak­ing Schindler impatient.

Cut 7 The name “Scharf” being typed.

Cut 8 Medium two-shot: Schindler say­ing “The children–all the children.”

Cut 9 Typ­ing two names in huge letters.

Cut 10 Two-shot start­ing on Schindler, pan­ning with him and tilt­ing down to Stern as Schindler asks, “How many?”  Stern replies, “Four hun­dred, four fifty.”  Tilt up with Schindler as he picks up a drink and says, “More–more.”

Cut 11 Cam­era close on Schindler exit­ing his car at the base of the hill in the Plas­zow forced labor camp, below Goeth’s villa.  Schindler walk­ing away from the cam­era, car­ry­ing a suitcase.

Cut 12 Over­head shot of Stern typ­ing and Schindler pac­ing, with what Spiel­berg calls his trade­mark “God light” stream­ing from win­dows at right suf­fus­ing the scene with a some­what unnat­ural radiance.

Cut 13 Goeth with the suitcase–camera cranes over the lid and tilts down past Goeth’s face to his hands fondling the money.

Cut 14 Typing–close on name

This is only half of the full three and half minute sequence.  Come back tomor­row for the con­tin­u­a­tion of Schinder’s List: Cut by Cut, Part 2.

Please leave your com­ments and/or ques­tions in the dia­log box below.  Thank you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 11:00. It is filed under Analysis, Cinematography, Editing, Visuals and tagged with analysis, black and white, cinema, director, film and video, filmmaking, filmmaking techniques, movies, noir, Steven Spielberg, Video Editing, war movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.