History and Hollywood

There are a number of instances in which a Hollywood film can be helpful in portraying the emotion and passion of a historical scenario in a more realistic fashion than print. One of the most poignant situations for this is the review of the horror of the holocaust during WWII. It is possible to gain an understanding of the central events and the statistics that document the human suffering of the war, but to understand the true human cost is nearly impossible by reading about it. The emotional impact of films about this topic can be very valuable in connecting students to history.

One of the films that examines the events of the war and the holocaust from an individual perspective is The Diary of Anne Frank. This film takes a true story, made into a popular play, and shows the struggle of a young Jewish girl who seeks to live with her family and others in hiding from the Nazis. This film, while old, provides students with the story in a moving and insightful format. The individual perspective of this film displays a very important value of film viewing, that of the personal nature of the human experience. In some ways, this type of film is especially suited to tell a story in an accurate and meaningful fashion. Each viewer has to come to the film individually and interact with the material presented internally first. In this way, the focus on one person and her experiences is appropriately focused.

Another film that takes a different approach on the same time period is Shindler’s List. This film has achieved more acclaim and it is well deserved. The film does a good job examining the progression of Schindler, but also the holocaust as a whole. In several scenes the viewer is thrust into the horror in a very authentic way. It is a movie based on a true story, and feels like a documentary, but contains elements of fictional embellishment just like most Hollywood films. Overall, the picture of the holocaust that gained from this film is priceless for young historical learners (if you can show it in a classroom).