A Film Unfinished (Short Review)

At the end of the outstanding documentary Anne Frank Remembered (1995), there is a scene that takes my breath away. It is a short clip of a home movie taken by people celebrating a wedding outside where Frank and her family lived before they had to go into hiding. The silent black and white home movie captures a window above for a few seconds, where one fleetingly sees Anne Frank as a happy girl leaning out watching the wedding celebration below. The scene is a testament to the power of video in capturing something unfathomable about the Nazi atrocities by merely showing a little girl on a balcony on a nice day.

A Film Unfinished

The images in the movie A Film Unfinished (2010) — released on DVD this month — are different but haunting in a similar way. So that after watching it, I felt like I had not breathed for the entire 88 minutes running time. Yael Hersonski’s documentary examines an unfinished Nazi propaganda film taken of the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942, a few months before the people there started being sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. Although that uncompleted propaganda film, called “Das Ghetto,” was found soon after the end of World War II, another film of outtakes found in 1998 revealed how much of the propaganda film was staged. The Nazis made the Jewish people in the film participate in staged scenes to highlight a contrast between the poor and those who appeared to be more affluent.

A Film Unfinished unveils the Nazi propaganda to reveal footage of profound suffering of people trying to survive. The footage is more disturbing knowing what awaits most people in the film in the months ahead of them. Hersonski makes wise choices about when to add explanation and when to let the scenes speak for themselves. Some of he power of the movie comes from hearing from some survivors as they watch the video (““What if I see someone I know?”).

Most of the movies we discuss on Chimesfreedom are moving in a way that the filmmakers designed. Here, although the exact propaganda designs of the original Nazi filmmakers of “Das Ghetto” are unclear to this day, the resulting movie has the opposite effect to those original plans. The portrait of history and human suffering revealed in A Film Unfinished is difficult, but essential, viewing.

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    Author: chimesfreedom

    Editor-in-chief, New York.

    2 thoughts on “A Film Unfinished (Short Review)”

    1. Wow, this is powerful stuff. I wonder if it is appropriate for my high school class! We are about to study WWI followed by WWII.

      Reply

    2. The article below about ratings mistakes made by the MPAA explains why “A Film Unfinished” was rated R and also why that was a mistake. Check the link. It might give some insight about whether or not it is appropriate for your class. If you think it is not, you might want to check out “Anne Frank Remembered,” which is mentioned in the original post too. Thanks for the comment.

      http://flavorwire.com/158938/10-of-the-mpaas-biggest-rating-mistakes

      Reply

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