Schindler's List

Cast View all

	Liam Neeson	Oskar Schindler
	Ben Kingsley	Itzhak Stern
	Ralph Fiennes	Amon Goeth
	Caroline Goodall	Emilie Schindler
	Jonathan Sagall	Poldek Pfefferberg
	Embeth Davidtz	Helen Hirsch
	Malgoscha Gebel	Victoria Klonowska
	Shmuel Levy	Wilek Chilowicz
	Mark Ivanir	Marcel Goldberg
	Beatrice Macola	Ingrid
	Andrzej Seweryn	Julian Scherner
	Friedrich von Thun	Rolf Czurda
	Krzysztof Luft	Herman Toffel
	Harry Nehring	Leo John
	Norbert Weisser	Albert Hujar
	Adi Nitzan	Mila Pfefferberg
	Michael Schneider	Juda Dresner
	Miri Fabian	Chaja Dresner
	Anna Mucha	Danka Dresner
	Albert Misak	Mordecai Wulkan
	Michael Gordon	Mr. Nussbaum
	Aldona Grochal	Mrs. Nussbaum
	Jacek Wójcicki	Henry Rosner
	Beata Paluch	Manci Rosner
	Piotr Polk	Leo Rosner

Crew View all

Director	Steven Spielberg
Writer	Thomas Keneally, Steven Zaillian
Producer	Irving Glovin, Kathleen Kennedy, Branko Lustig, Gerald R. Molen, Robert Raymond, Lew Rywin, Steven Spielberg
Musician	John Williams
Photography	Janusz Kaminski

Trailer

Edition details

Personal

Notes

Story Synopsis:
"Schindler’s List" is director Steven Spielberg’s Oscar®-winning epic based upon the novel by Thomas Keneally. It is the story of Oskar Schindler (Neeson), a German industrialist who becomes a hero by actively preventing the more than 1,300 Jewish workers in his factory from being sent to their deaths in the Nazi extermination camps. It is a true story of hope and the human spirit, told in an intense, yet lyrical, three-hour-plus portrait of the Holocaust-echoing the Scriptural proverb given to Schindler by his grateful workers: Who saves one life, saves the world. (Gary Reber)

DVD Picture:
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85:1 DVD picture presents Janusz Kaminski’s gorgeous Academy Award®-winning black-and-white cinematography with a beautifully balanced gray scale. (The few color sequences offer warm, nicely balanced hues.) Deep blacks, bright whites, and an excellent gradation of visual information between the two extremes make this picture appear striking. Images are sharp and detailed, with nicely rendered textures and definition. Film grain inherent in the source element is noticed, mostly in lighter scenes, and adds a gritty texture to the imagery. Edge enhancement is noticed at times, but should only bother the pickier viewers. Its presence is not likely to be much of a distraction on smaller home theatre displays. Pixelization, smearing, or loss of finer details do not appear to be a problem with this DVD. (Suzanne Hodges)

Soundtrack:
One of the joys of working at Widescreen Review as Associate Editor and DVD Sound Quality Reviewer is being able to have the honored opportunity to critique and discuss certain films that make a difference and mean something. "Schindler’s List" is, of course, one of those films. Someone said years ago, and I can’t remember who, that when you watch a movie in the safe, secure, and comfortable confines of your home theatre-and because of your heightened relaxed state-the walls that are built up around your subconscious melt away much easier, making you more susceptible to the full range of emotional states that the filmgoing experience can offer. The resulting effect, and the experience that transpires as you partake in this exercise, is much more powerful than the same experience you would have in a large, cold, and impersonal cinema multiplex. The same can be said here in regards to this film that’s directed by Steven Spielberg. "Schindler’s List" is a film that touches upon some of the most basic human feelings and instincts like power, family, love, loss, persecution, survival, religion, and community. To pull off the full emotional effect of a film as important as this one is, it takes a very powerful and poignant soundtrack to musically move those internal emotions along while your mind perceives and translates the physical action on-screen. Both sides of the mental/emotional equation must be equal to break down those subconscious walls and transport you into the experiences and guttural human feelings that a powerful film like this can provide. "Schindler’s List" on DVD easily achieves that balance in the home theatre environment. Both the Dolby® Digital and DTS® Digital Surround™ soundtracks provide more than ample emotional substance through exemplary fidelity and very neutral tonality to make this film on DVD an emotionally powerful experience. The front center channel accurately and precisely reproduces dialogue and voices. This is especially apparent in the very difficult-to-record outdoor scenes. The subtle vocal reflections and reverberations shine in these very hectic scenes. The front three screen channels house most of the audio activity with the surrounds adding excellent atmosphere and ambience to the presentation. John Williams’ beautiful, soulful, and sometimes haunting musical composition is one of the best movie scores you’ll ever hear. The tender violin and piano melodies within his sweeping orchestral work is much more emotionally powerful in the home theatre environment than that during what was experienced when the film was in the theatre during its original theatrical release. In the home environment this outstanding score reaches you on a very personal level and electrifies the home surround sound landscape. Williams’ score is so emotionally moving and wonderfully layered and textured musically, that it’s no wonder he won the 1994 Academy Award® for Original Score for his work on this film. Although this is a mostly quiet and subtle sound mix, more activity from the LFE channel would have been preferable. The use of the LFE channel disappoints a bit as there is minimal, albeit adequate, low bass activity on Side 1. It is not really until Side 2 to hear any sort of substantial low end to the soundtrack. There are many times when some powerful and forceful .1 LFE channel activity could have added so much more dynamic range to the audio presentation, especially on Side 1. The one area where more low-end extension would have been so much more effective is during the scenes in the “Liquidation Of The Warsaw Ghetto” in Chapter 14. There appears to be a “virtual” bass presence from the normal low-end audio range of the soundtrack coming from the front three loudspeakers, but there is no pronounced subwoofer activity to accentuate the brutal happenings onscreen in an audio context. Our Dorrough Loudness Monitor never showed any activity of the LFE channel during these scenes in Chapter 14. The lack of substantive bass extension is my only critical complaint in regards to the makeup of the overall soundtrack. This fault doesn’t really take away from the final rating of the soundtrack, but the addition of more low-end bass extension in some key areas would have been more welcome. The only other complaint of the audio portion of this DVD is purely in the way the audio settings are set up on Disc 2. If you press “Continue Film” after you flip the DVD over to Side 2, the movie continues to play in Dolby Digital. To playback the DTS audio track, you must first choose “Menu” to access the DTS soundtrack. Instead of going directly into the DTS audio version of the film, the DTS “Sonic Landscape” Trailer plays before you are fully transported back into experiencing the movie in DTS. The unfortunate circumstance about this is that you are jolted out of the movie experience into reality until the feature starts up again. In regards to the comparison between the two encoded digital audio formats, the DTS version presents a more open, detailed, better channel separation, and refined Holosonic™ performance than that of the Dolby Digital version. This soundtrack really is wonderful to hear and experience, as it does so many things so well, and is first-rate. (Jeffrey Kern)

This Disc Contains The Following WSR-Rated Superb Qualities:
Reference Quality
Superb Cinematography

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