‘You cannot look at this’: Thresholds of Unrepresentability in Holocaust film

Langford, Barry

doi:10.1080/17504902.1999.11087094

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In particular, Schindler's List and Holocaust are credited with having established these conventions and are often criticized for their perceived roles in commodifying the Holocaust as a formulaic and accessible form of family entertainment (p. 24). As scholar Barry Langford (1999) has explained, the accessibility of commercial films is begotten through the pursuit of popularity, which relies on "referential and performative conventions whose verisimilitude is measured in circular fashion, not against their relevance or applicability to the 'real world'" (p. 26). In the case of the Holocaust film, this pursuit has led to simplifications perpetuating historical inaccuracies that erase the specificity of Jewish experiences of the Holocaust.…”

Section: The Holocaust On Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stücke: Graphic Vignettes and the Haptic Response in László Nemes’s Saul fia

Wald

2022

TAR

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This article examines László Nemes’s film Saul fia (2015) and its visual and sonic use of brutalized human bodies to induce a haptic response in its audience. Presented out of focus and often at the periphery of the shot, the visual frame of human death causes viewers of the film to recoil into the centre of the frame—a space typically occupied by the film’s protagonist, Saul Auslӓnder. This article argues that these visually and sonically induced haptic triggers, and the claustrophobia that results, tether the audience to Auslӓnder to re-centre the viewer’s gaze as that of a companion rather than perpetrator. Drawing from extant literature on cinematic haptics and filmic representations of the Holocaust, this article engages with contemporary discourses on graphic Holocaust representations in contemporary feature-length films to examine the impact of graphic imagery and haptic cinematics on the perspective and ability of the viewer to subvert the perpetrator gaze.

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Section: The Holocaust On Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…28-29). However, Langford's (1999) analysis of Shoah has challenged such praise by highlighting the film's reliance on the direction of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, who was extensively involved in the staging of witness interviews (pp. 23-40).…”

Section: The Holocaust On Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%