How effectively does Hollywood depict reality? Is it possible to reconcile the demands of popular entertainment with a historical event as sombre as the Holocaust?
Daniel Anker's film supplies many questions and some answers. He starts back in the 1930s by showing Hollywood's ham-fisted efforts to chronicle the rise of Nazism. Later, in 1945, a planeload of Hollywood executives were shipped to visit the newly liberated concentration camps. When the rushes were screened in Hollywood, many of them were overcome by what they saw. But, for the next 10 years, Hollywood didn't touch the Holocaust.
Films only started being made in the mid-1960s. The Holocaust only really entered the consciousness of Americans via a mini-series broadcast by NBC in the late 1970s. Anker examines the reasons for these failings. On the whole he discards one explanation - Hollywood executives were Jewish, and therefore not eager to appear, to begin with at least, to be indulging in special pleading. More convincing is the argument that Hollywood believed that atrocity doesn't sell - people just wouldn't queue in the rain for Auschwitz.
More encouraging is the latter half of the film in which Anker interviews the likes of Steven Spielberg. It does appear that such films as Schindler's List can reach very wide audiences and nonetheless remain truthful.
Anker closes this remarkable film by looking at the debasement of the Holocaust in later years. Many of the recent TV series have just milked atrocity for what it is worth, persuing ratings through sensation.
This is a very scrupulous examination of a difficult topic. If you feel that you have seen enough about the Holocaust (and I hope you don't), you could nonetheless watch the film for what it tells us about the treatment of any atrocity.
