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To this day, Schindler's List is a tough sit, featuring some of the most relentlessly brutal sequences in Hollywood cinema. As hard as it can be to watch, it was also an ordeal to make. Spielberg himself found the experience emotionally draining, and actors like Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, and Liam Neeson found their lives and attitudes transfigured by their brush with Holocaust history. The making of Schindler's List is a tale almost worthy of a movie itself.
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While many films have been made about the horrors and tragedy of the Holocaust
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none can compare with Steven Spielberg's 1993 epic Schindler's List. To this day, the film is tough to sit through
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featuring many intense sequences depicting the brutal realities of the concentration camps
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But as hard as it can be to watch, it was also an ordeal to make
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In fact, it's almost worthy of a movie itself. So, today we'll be looking at some behind-the-scenes stories
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from the making of Schindler's List. Maybe put the popcorn away for this movie
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The path to Schindler's List began with Holocaust survivor Leopold Poldek Pfefferberg
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who was number 173 on the eponymous list. Determined to cajole anyone he could
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into telling Oscar Schindler's story to the wider world, Pfefferberg encountered writer Thomas Keneally
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in Beverly Hills in 1980 and pitched the idea to him. The result was Keneally's 1982 novelization of Schindler's Life
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originally titled Schindler's Ark. Later, Pfefferberg was equally insistent that the story should come to the big screen
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He urged Steven Spielberg to make the film, promising an Oscar for Oscar
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The project spent almost a decade in development, going through multiple rewrites and bouncing among directors
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But when Spielberg finally made it, he received two Academy Awards, proving Pfefferberg right
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The year 1993 may have been the pinnacle of Steven Spielberg's long career
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It saw the release of both the box office behemoth Jurassic Park and the Oscar-winning Schindler's List
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But if not for one key decision, neither film would have seen the light of day
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Spielberg, who had retreated to more commercial fare after the lukewarm reception of 1987's Empire of the Sun
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decided to finally direct Schindler's List after reading the most recent of many screenplay drafts by writer Stephen Zalian
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But he needed Universal's bankroll to do it. Spielberg's longtime mentor, Universal Studios chief Sidney Sheinberg
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agreed to greenlight the film under one condition. Spielberg had to make Jurassic Park first
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Spielberg obviously agreed, but that didn't exactly give him carte blanche for his more serious project
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In the early 1990s, when Schindler's List was being made, A black and white film about the Holocaust wasn't seen
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as a particularly commercial idea. As such the budget for Schindler List was a relatively lean million By contrast Jurassic Park was budgeted at million Adding to the leanness was Spielberg decision
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not to take a salary for directing the movie. He felt that payment for telling such a story
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would amount to blood money. As the director put it himself in a 2004 interview with Today
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when I first decided to make Schindler's List, I said, if this movie makes any profit, it can't go to me or my family
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It has to go out to the world. While casting Schindler's List, some of the German actors who sent in audition tapes
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actually apologized on the country's behalf. Spielberg called this a fascinating experience
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But despite the actors' willingness to discuss their country's atrocities, once they were in full Waffen-SS costumes
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Spielberg found himself unable to make small talk with them. Thankfully, that on-set tension didn't last long
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Spielberg's attitude changed after the German actors came to participate in a Passover Seder with the Jewish cast members
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As the director told Newsweek in 1993, all the German actors showed up, and this family
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of actors sat around, and race and culture were just left behind
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Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes, who played Pwashoff camp commandant Amon Goethe, did a lot of
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research on the real-life man he was meant to portray on screen. In a 2010 interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he told journalist
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Bob Woodward, I remember there being accounts by survivors who talked about their terror
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when they saw him. Many accounts of him were just full of the physical fear that people felt when they saw him
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Fein saw this firsthand when Mila Pfefferberg, a survivor who had known the real Goethe
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came to the Schindler's List set. Seeing Fein's in full costume and adopting the camp commandant's mannerisms
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Pfefferberg actually shook with fear. Perhaps the most unbelievable scene in Schindler's List is the one in which Amon Goethe attempts
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to shoot Rabbi Rob Lovartoff, played by Ezra Dagan, after having deemed him unsuitable to
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continue making hinges in the factory. Gert tries two different pistols, each of which misfires
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and finally gives up in frustration. Anyone could be forgiven for supposing this scene was a
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screenwriter's concoction, but in fact, it really happened. Though in the actual event, Levertov's
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excuse about shoveling coal was a lie. He thought of it at the last minute to save his life. After
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Gert's guns had jammed and before the commandant could find one that worked, one of Schindler's
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list producers was Bronco Lustig, a Croatian-American Holocaust survivor who had been an Auschwitz inmate as a boy
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He saw the film as an opportunity to tell the stories of those who did not survive the camps While filming in Auschwitz Liam Neeson complained about the cold temperatures and Luz Dug overheard him The survivor showed Neeson his arm tattoo reminding the actor how much worse some people had had it
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When the crew filmed exterior shots at the actual Auschwitz site, Neeson recalled
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I'm looking at the real huts of Auschwitz, and Bronco comes up to me and he points out one of the huts
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and said, see that hut there? That was the hut I was in. And it hit me
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Big effin' time. Although Liam did not say effin'. He is Irish
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Though Liam Neeson's performance as the lead in Schindler's List has earned its fair share of critical praise
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the actor struggled on set, and not just with the cold. Neeson initially had difficulty with Spielberg's directing style, feeling that it was too controlling
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The issue first came up when Spielberg directed him in the early nightclub scene
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where we meet Schindler smoking a cigarette and watching several German officers at another table
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According to Neeson in the 2017 documentary Spielberg, the director critiqued his every moment as though he were telling him how to breathe
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Afterward, Neeson complained to co-star Ben Kingsley, I don't want to be a puppet. I'm 41 years of age
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Kingsley advised Neeson to lean into Spielberg's direction and trust the process
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Neeson agreed, and things went more smoothly after that. One of the most memorable scenes in the film involves the little girl in a red coat
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whom Schindler sees wandering around while the Krakow ghetto is being liquidated
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Although the girl functions narratively as a trigger for Schindler to find his conscience
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Spielberg noted that to him, the girl also represented the way the Holocaust was happening
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at full view of the world, yet little was done to stop it. The girl was played by Olivia Dombrovska
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who was three years old at the time. Spielberg made her promise not to watch Schindler's List
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until she turned 18. But Dombraska did not keep this promise. She watched the movie for the first time at 11
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and later admitted this was a mistake. She found it difficult to process emotionally
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and it left her ashamed and traumatized. Another one of the most haunting sequences in Schindler's List
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dramatizes the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto on March 13, 1943, by German soldiers who indiscriminately shot anyone who fled or was
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deemed unfit to work in the concentration camp. Ben Kingsley, who played Schindler's Jewish
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accountant, Itzhak Stern, recalled how deeply disturbing it was to experience even a fictional
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rendering of this horrific moment saying in the liquidation of the ghetto scene I knew I had to serve the story I remember my lines but I was in deep shock No acting The beautifully orchestrated chaos was unrepeatable
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or unforgettable. Adding to the difficulty of shooting Schindler's List was the presence of
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some locals who seemed to harbor pro-Third Reich sentiments. Cast and crew would sometimes find
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swastika spray-painted on the sets. And one local woman complimented Ralph Fiennes on his snappy SS
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uniform, adding that she missed the Germans who had protected them. In another incident
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a German-speaking businessman approached Israeli actor Michael Schneider in a hotel bar and mimed
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a noose, saying, Hitler should have finished the job. Enraged, Ben Kingsley stood up and had to be
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restrained from assaulting the man. One thing that thankfully wasn't difficult during the production
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was the weather. Though it was dreadfully cold, that's exactly what Spielberg wanted. In fact
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producer Gerald Mullen believed there was a higher power at work, helping the Schindler's
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list production go smoothly. The cooperation of the weather was the chief reason he got this
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impression. Spielberg wanted key scenes to be filmed in the snow, but when the production began
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there was none. Mullen was about to have truckfuls of the stuff brought in from the mountains
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but just before shooting began, a blizzard blew in. Later, when other scenes required the snow
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to be gone, the weather cooperated again, and the snow melted just in time for filming to begin
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According to Mullen, it seems that from the moment Spielberg decided to work on Schindler's List
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I knew that something special would be happening. It was obvious to me that we were being divinely
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guided. There's no denying that Schindler's List was a difficult shoot, but the subject matter
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compounded this difficulty. Spielberg found the work draining, not only because of the intense
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and violent nature of the scenes, but because the process was forcing him to come to terms with his
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own Jewish heritage. He was intensely aware that, had he been in this location 50 years earlier
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he would have suffered in the same way as the film's characters. Each day's shooting left
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Spielberg physically and emotionally exhausted. Luckily, someone was there to keep his spirits up
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His friend Robin Williams, who had recently starred in the Spielberg-directed Hook
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shared weekly phone calls with the director. At the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival
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Spielberg told the gathered crowd that Robin would call me on schedule
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and he would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone. He would never say goodbye
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He would always just hang up on the biggest laugh he got from me, mic drop. Eh, maybe he should have put Robin in the movie
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Eh, then again, maybe not