Review of Shoah (1985) by Michael H — 16 Aug 2014

An extremely valuable document of the extermination of Jews during WWII. The twenty-five years since it's release add a second layer as a document of the 70s, when it was filmed. I am ambivalent about the length of the film. The length allows us to get to know the interviewees and the locations well and become immersed in the details of lives lived so immersed in horror that it became, for some, routine. On the other hand, the innumerable and sometimes repetitious advancing or retreating shots and the subtitling of the interviews conducted via translator could have been tightened up in editing to cut an hour or more off the running length with little chance of undermining it's impact.

I expect that the running time was more effective in the mid-Eighties when the film was released and these stories were a revelation than it is now when most of us have been exposed to many, many details of WWII that were less easily shared in the decades closer to the war.