Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Elie Wiesel
- Preface
- Introduction
- I Finding an Appropriate Language
- II Narrative Strategies
- 5 The Jew as Child
- 6 In Hiding/Onstage
- 7 Beautiful Evasions?
- 8 The Condemned and Doomed
- III Responses to Nazi Atrocity
- IV Shaping Reality
- V Third Edition Update
- Annotated Filmography (Third Edition)
- Filmography (Second Edition)
- Notes
- Bibliography (Second Edition)
- Bibliography (Third Edition)
- Relevant Websites
- Index
5 - The Jew as Child
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword by Elie Wiesel
- Preface
- Introduction
- I Finding an Appropriate Language
- II Narrative Strategies
- 5 The Jew as Child
- 6 In Hiding/Onstage
- 7 Beautiful Evasions?
- 8 The Condemned and Doomed
- III Responses to Nazi Atrocity
- IV Shaping Reality
- V Third Edition Update
- Annotated Filmography (Third Edition)
- Filmography (Second Edition)
- Notes
- Bibliography (Second Edition)
- Bibliography (Third Edition)
- Relevant Websites
- Index
Summary
Many films dealing with the Holocaust focus on children or adolescents: among these, Black Thursday, The Two of Us, Goodbye, Children, and Les Violons du Bal explore the German Occupation of France through its effects on Jewish children, while The Evacuees and David depict hunted boys in wartime England and Germany. The most salient feature of this narrative strategy is that it highlights the intimacy of family, insisting upon the primacy of blood ties even as it demonstrates that individual survival was predicated on separation. There are also films that do not center on a young Jew – such as The Damned and The Tin Drum – but yoke childhood and Judaism together to express weakness and victimization. In a perceptive article entitled “The Jew as a Female Figure in Holocaust Film,” Judith Dones on has noted that many Holocaust films focus on the Jew “as a weak character, somewhat feminine, being protected by a strong Christian-gentile, the male, in what comes to symbolize a male–female relationship.” While this is clearly the case for films like Black Thursday, some of the darker visions of the Holocaust depict the Jew as child – whether male or female – both literally and figuratively. In the case of Visconti's The Damned (1969), which will be analyzed in Chapter 8, the only Jewish character is indeed a little girl, Lisa. The perverse Martin (Helmut Berger) is attracted to this wide-eyed girl who lives next door to his mistress, and he gently seduces her. When he returns to the room she occupies, Lisa (Irina Wanka) quietly gets out of bed, walks out of the room, and (we learn later) hangs herself.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Indelible ShadowsFilm and the Holocaust, pp. 77 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002