Shoah ***** (1985, Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaïdl, Itzhak Dugin, Richard Glazar, Paula Biren, Helena Pietyra, Pan Filipowicz, Pan Falborski)- Classic Movie Review 7255

French writer-director Claude Lanzmann’s exhaustive 1985 nine-hour, 26-minute documentary on the holocaust, Shoah, is put together by director Lanzmann from more than 350 hours of filmed interviews with survivors, guards and witnesses. Shoah is the Hebrew name used to symbolise the devastation.

Lanzmann chooses not to use archive footage of the camps, but to concentrate on the power of the survivors’ testimony. This includes ex-Nazis, who agreed to be interviewed by audio only and were recorded secretly.

Shoah is a mammoth, heart-rending journey into the darkest night of man’s most grotesque treatment of fellow human beings.

Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaïdl, Itzhak Dugin, Richard Glazar, Paula Biren, Helena Pietyra, Pan Filipowicz, and Pan Falborski are among those who appear.

It is shot by Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg and William Lubtchansky.

The Criterion Collection released Shoah in 2013 on BluRay, based on a 4K digital film restoration.

Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018).

Claude Lanzmann died on 5 July 2018 in Paris, aged 92.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7255

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com