Daniel
Ankar's Imaginary Witness: Hollywood & the Holocaust
by Jay Blotcher
...bear
witness to a shameful chapter in show business history that
failed to properly chronicle the years of deathcamp extermination.
Anker
completed preliminary interviews in 2004, but spent the ensuing
three years chasing down the rights for film clips that appear,
representing 26 theatrical and television movies in total.
“We’re still in the process of raising money to
cover those costs,” Anker wrote, “which are extensive.”
Anker
shows that even rare moments of studio courage in the mid-
40s were also partial cop-outs. Films like Gentleman’s
Agreement and Crossfire (both 1947) tackled anti-Semitism
head-on, at a time when American hotels could still turn away
dogs and Hebrews. But these films limned bigotry in an American
cultural vacuum; there was no mention that the blood of millions
of Jews had just stained European soil.
Curiously,
the real truth-teller in the documentation of the Holocaust
was the lowly medium of television. Anker explains how the
unprecedented success of the ABC-TV mini-series Roots encouraged
NBC executives to greenlight a nine-hour mini-series in 1978
called Holocaust. Running four consecutive nights in 1978,
and starring Michael Moriarty, Tovah Feldshuh, James Woods
and Meryl Streep, Holocaust was eventually seen by half of
America, the film contends.
While
Holocaust scholar and voice of conscience Elie Weisel dismissed
the film as more soap opera than historical document, the
TV film sent shock waves across the world. The mini-series
was even televised in Germany....
CONTINUE...
|
