ViewGuide

Created Jun 16, 2011 11:14AM PST • Edited Jun 16, 2011 11:14AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   In the Spring of 1942, Nazi propaganda filmmakers began filming in the Warsaw Ghetto, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews. The film that was shot, without sound or narration, was intended to show the world how well the Jews were living, and included staged shots showing elaborate feasts, ceremonies, and carelessness towards human beings. In reality, the Warsaw Ghetto was a place of suffering and despair, where thousands of people were beaten, abused, starved, and killed, before eventually being sent off to Nazi concentration camps.

   After the war, the unfinished films were found in a bunker basement, simply labeled "The Ghetto.” What filmmaker Yael Hersonski has done is take those films, and match them with eyewitness accounts, from residents and the German filmmakers themselves, giving us an eyewitness view to one of the greatest human tragedies we have ever witnessed. You cannot help but be haunted by the images of despair and suffering captured on film. You look into the eyes of those forced to participate as “actors” and see fear and uncertainty, as rumors of mass deportations to “work camps” spread throughout the ghetto.

   Media has long been used for political gain, and this film is an excellent example of how it can manipulative. The heart-wrenching scenes are real, and the pain and suffering that is captured on film should never be forgotten.

   Powerful work that speaks volumes about the cruelty of man.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Although there were no actors per se, the narration was first rate, and those who had lived through the nightmare as children, and are now in their golden years, gave powerful credibility to what we see on the screen.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5

    I hate giving such a high rating to anything shot by Nazi’s, but in this case, their own work is used to show the atrocities they created.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.5

17. Sex Titillating 2.2

    Nudity when women and men are forced to take group ritual baths on film.

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

    Images of starvation, beating, and corpses laying on the street. Images of bodies piled up in a mass grave.

19. Rudeness Salty 2.1

    No fould language, but tough imagery.

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

    It doesn’t get more real than this.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0