SEEING HOLOCAUST FILMS

MIKIRO KATO
ASSOCIATE PRORESSOR OF CINEMA STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF KYOTO

��
　　Film organizes our vision. Filmmakers make choices concerning what to film. The way in which they organize these choices to create a film is highly political in the broad sense. These politics are realized in the balance and tension of the recombined elements. In other words, spectators are politically produced through the taking on of the privileged position organized by the film. As the film scholars Christian Metz and Stephen Heath point out, films are constructed along three lines of vision: the look of characters in the film; the look of the camera; and the look of the spectators. The film entangles the spectator in the relay between these looks. 1
　　The Hollywood film The Pawnbroker (Sidney Lumet, 1964) poignantly illustrates this relay between looks. In the following analysis, I will examine the way in which the film's history as well as the cultural backdrop in which it is bound to combine to create a historical moment. In this moment, the work of the film becomes clear given the context of film and cultural history.
　　The Pawnbroker is a Holocaust film. It combines stories from two different times and locations to symbolically convey the hell of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. The two juxtaposed locations include an abandoned 1960s Manhattan ghetto, and a 1940s Nazi concentration camp. The protagonist, an aging Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, manages an inconspicuous pawnshop in a forgotten corner of New York City. In an ironic twist, the protagonist, formerly caged by the Nazis, now makes his living working behind a security cage in the pawnshop.2
　　In the film, the pawnshop is the site of a small incident: in an attempt to raise the price of the goods brought to pawn, a black prostitute suddenly begins a striptease dance in front of the protagonist, the owner of the pawnshop. She holds her bare breasts before the protagonist's eyes, demanding with words and gestures that he look. The black woman's aggressive presentation sparks an abhorrent memory stored in the back of the aging Jew's mind. Our look at the screen as spectators is then led back to the past, to the concentration camp. Hellish scenes from the protagonist's concentration camp experience are cut into and shuffled with the black woman's "striptease dance." Soundtracks from the respective scenes are likewise interpolated. In the 1960s, the filmic device known as the flashback came into wide use. In this case, short flashbacks of the time in which the Jew was forced to watch a German officer rape his wife are inserted into the scene in which the Jew is "forced" to look at the prostitute, thus creating a montage of memory. In its use of the flashback, The Pawnbroker hardly differs from the hundreds of films at the time which employed the flashback mode. Juxtaposing similar images and sounds, the film shuffles the past with the present, memory with reality. The central subjective trauma of the film is simply layered over with a variation of that trauma. The traumatic hell of the past from which the protagonist cannot escape is thus accurately conveyed through the use of a popular commercial spectacle of the period (in fact Rod Steiger, who plays the tormented Jew, won the Academy Award that year for best actor due to his powerful performance).
　　When considering The Pawnbroker 's production process, investigation of another historical current becomes significant. The Pawnbroker should be remembered as the first American film to transgress the Hays Code, a code strictly limiting all expression of sexuality. From its institution in 1934, the Hays Code, with its system of punishments for transgressors, played the leading role as arbitrator of morality in film production. In terms of what could be shown on screen, clause 6-3 of the code clearly states that the expression of nudity is forbidden. Intimidating filmmakers into self-censorship, the Hays Code thus controlled major currents and styles of expression in Hollywood films from within Hollywood. Though change was underway in many branches of society, it wasn't until the late date of 1964 that the depiction of female nudity (more specifically, female breasts) in major Hollywood films (though shot in New York) had finally become acceptable to the public. Before the institution of the Hays Code (pre-1934), the depiction of female nudity was not uncommon. Thirty years later, it again became possible. For all practical purposes, the critical and commercial success of The Pawnbroker brought the curtain down on the Hays Code signaling its eventual demise, but that is another story. Having discussed The Pawnbroker's position within cultural-historical trends, we now turn to the film's skillful networking of the look.
　　The Pawnbroker insulates the look of spectators through a systematic relay of the looks. The film was marketed as the first film to depict female nudity in America following a 30-year ban. Expectation from spectators ran high for a film that would transgress the prudish Hays Code. However, spectators who headed to the cinema with the expectation of actively "seeing" female nudity were instead "shown" female nudity. The significance of The Pawnbroker is in its use of devices that invert attitudes toward seeing, skillfully shifting spectators from active to passive "seeing" positions. This inversion device goes into effect when the black prostitute demands to be looked at. The black prostitute, forcing the protagonist to watch her striptease, occupies a position distinct from that of the white woman (Janet Leigh) in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Whereas the victim in Psycho is a woman, the object of the look of the psychopath, the victim in The Pawnbroker is, as it were, a man, the object of the black woman's flaunting of her naked body. The prostitute's aggressive words and gestures disable the viewer from occupying the position of the peeper (the position of the psychopath played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho). Instead, in conjunction with the Jewish protagonist, viewers are put in the position of being shown the spectacle.
　　In the diegetic world of the film, the protagonist is the only person who really is shown the woman's naked body. In the extradiegetic world, spectators are shown the scene in which the Jewish man is shown the black woman's body. The spectators' look, as if insulated in a double-layered cocoon, is relayed through the character's look at the black woman's naked body, because, rather than being active watchers of the striptease, spectators become passive watchers of a passive watcher (i.e. the Jewish man). In this way they are sufficiently insulated from the sin of seeing the forbidden.
　　Finally and most significantly, as a protection device, the flashback, kicks in. The flashback enables the representation of the present alongside a past that still lives on in the present. Due to the potent filmic effects of intermittent montage between the present and the past, spectators see that when the Jewish man is forced to watch the black woman's naked body, he recalls another scene from the past which he was forced to watch -- that of a his own wife being raped by a German officer: "Look (at your wife's naked body)." In this series of shots, what spectators are "shown" is not only the black woman's naked body, but that of the white woman. The black woman's body is nothing more than the bait, the occasion which triggers the oppressed memory and relays the look of the protagonist -- both in the present and in the past-- and that of spectator. By contrast, the white woman, the wife of the protagonist to whom her naked body is shown, is a "proper" object of sexual desire. The black woman is a transgressing sexual object, both because she is a prostitute in Harlem and because she is the first one who dares to transgress the Hays Code in thirty years. She marks transgression, which triggers the appearance of an otherwise unacceptable sexual object: the white naked body of the protagonist's wife. When the Hays Code curtain was lifted before the American public after a thirty-year hiatus beginning in 1934, the first thing shown to the largely white male audience of The Pawnbroker was a black woman's breasts. This male audience was spared for a while from seeing the naked breasts of a woman with the same color of skin as their wives and lovers. The naked body of the black woman (present) serves as a veil covering the naked body of the white woman (past). The black woman is blatantly exploited by the white men who produced and directed the film.
　　In this way, the spectator's look, insulated within the continuous relay between the look of the camera and that of the protagonist within the diegesis, remains protected at a third remove. Spectators are first shown (1) the Jewish man's look on the black woman's naked body that is shown to him. Next they are shown (2) his look on the white woman's naked body that is also shown to him. Constructed through repetition, the relay from (1) to (2) functions as a protective device; the look of spectators and the object of their desire is represented through this safety device. Through the relay between the look of the camera and that of the protagonist, spectators are able to see not only the object of the look in the present, but also the object of his look from the past--a look not possible in the present. Able to see both present and past, the spectator enjoys a privileged position, an omniscient look from on high.
　　By 1964, the year that The Pawnbroker presented female nudity before the American public for the first time in 30 years, the Hays Code had already lost much of its moral authority (though it would still be some years before its outright repeal). The film, publicized for its daring to challenge the code, created a major scandal. However the look of spectators who headed off to theaters to see The Pawnbroker was insulated from committing outright transgression by the look-relay device which we have discussed. One reason for the unwavering mass appeal of film is the devices that it employs to modulate the relay between the look and desire. As film spectators, individuals can live in a dream world of expanded desires and pleasures protected from fear of any real injury or danger.
　　An analysis of the constructed devices used in a film to relay the look can at the same time suggest the ways in which a film was actually seen in its historical moment. Such deconstructive investigation can serve to illuminate the historical conditions under which a film was produced. As mentioned in the opening of this essay, the privileged position of spectator is an effect of relay of the looks between characters, camera and spectator both in the diegetic world and in the extradiegetic world. Through consideration of the privileged position of the spectator and its role in making sense of a film, as well as consideration of the historical conditions of a film's production and consumption, film scholars and critics can elucidate the constructed nature of film.

�
　　Our argument up to this point assumes the presence of editing. A film becomes a finished product only after being shot, developed, cut up and then reassembled or edited. Like language, the cutting and re-assembly--the reconstruction of reality--assigns the representation a specific content and direction. Editing is a process in which the film is divided into blocks or chunks that are then re-assembled. In this way, the diegetic world of the film is supposed to be made intelligible. Spectators are thus directed to look (or not to look) at certain things. The filmic organization of the look controls, however subtly, the direction taken by the look of spectator. The control and insulation such organization of the look produces, however, has not always been a given element of film. Momijigari (Shibata Tsunekichi, 1899), one of the oldest surviving films made by a Japanese for the Japanese featuring a Japanese star, provides an example. In this short film, the revered Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro (the ninth generation) accidentally drops his fan in front of the camera. Obviously at the time, the principle of editing had not yet been incorporated into filmmaking. Generally speaking, film can be divided into two types: edited and unedited. While edited films can easily organize the look into a complex that directs and insulates the look of spectators, unedited films tend to exhibit less direction and manipulation over the spectator's look.
　　Within the context of our discussion, the holocaust film Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) provides an interesting case study. Coming to direct this film at the age of sixty, Lanzmann, speaking in light of film history, appraises his own film in the following way. He claims that Shoah, a newly discovered documentary-style film, is totally different from Spielberg's film (Schindler's List, 1993), a traditional Hollywood film. But in what way? Lanzmann claims that his film is not a reconstructed film.3 In order to test the validity of his statement we must examine whether Lanzmann really does manage to avoid the reconstruction of reality that is claimed to be characteristic of Spielberg's version of Shoah and by definition every Hollywood film.
　　For the economy of discussion we will examine what I consider the Achilles' heel, the weakest link in this lengthy nine and one half hour political film--a scene that witnesses its own reconstruction through editing. Contrary to the film director's claim to have invented a new documentary-style film form, Shoah decidedly follows old patterns and traditional forms of documentary films in its production. A discussion of this scene will make two points clear. First, the film stumbles over the dilemma all films must negotiate--that the organization of the look through editing creates political effects in the broad sense. That is to say, Lanzmann's film provides spectators with a priviledged position, a service he thinks typical of Hollywood film. Second, the critique of Hollywood film made by Lanzmann and those Left-wing intellectuals who clamor to join him reveals their ignorance of film history and theory. Ironically, the weakest sequence in Shoah resembles a scene from Schindler's List of which Lanzmann is critical. In truth, the majority of Schindler's List falls, as claimed by Lanzmann, well within tried and true Hollywood formulas. As Lanzmann points out, Schindler's List is overflowing with stereotypical shots (i.e., the old bearded Jew who strives for wealth, the mountain of gold teeth piled up in the concentration camp). Accurate portrayal of the Holocaust cannot be achieved through the banal representation of Jews and concentration camps. As a result, the singularity of the Holocaust as an event is lost (but it should be remembered that filmic representation is by definition one step removed from any event which actually occurs--singularity is inevitably lost). Criticism for undue banality should be harsh. But those who criticize Spielberg not only fail to realize the banality of the filmic representation that they defend, but also fall into a trap of post-Griffith editing. The problematic sequence in Lanzmann's Shoah consists of the following three set-ups:

Set-up 1: One of the Jewish survivors who testifies that he witnessed the train's arrival at the concentration camp and watched the Jews then being unloaded from the "death train."
Set-up 2: A gate of the concentration camp as if seen from the point of view of Jews who have been loaded onto a moving train.
Set-up 3: Another Jewish survivor who testifies that he was among the people loaded into the "death train," experiencing fear and confusion after arriving and being unloaded at the concentration camp.

　　According to the interviewee in set-up 1, at the concentration camp he watched the train stopped, and saw the Nazi officers open the doors of freight cars in which the Jews had been packed for long days. Now finally they were unloaded from the cars, but in reality within hours ninety percent of them would be sent to the gas chambers. On the other hand, according to the interviewee in set-up 3, the Jews tumbled and fell out of the freight cars. In the pushing and shoving, family members were separated from one another. In the midst of screaming and angry shouting, troops began to beat them. They didn't have any idea as to what was going on.
　　The point of view in each of the above set-ups can be described as follows:

Set-up 1: The view from outside the train (while waiting for the doors of the cars to be opened).
Set-up 2: The view from aboard the train (as the train arrives).
Set-up 3: The view from within the train (as the doors of the freight cars are opened).

　　Pivoted around the train's arrival, these three set-ups involve three irreconcilable aspects. We cannot take at face value Lanzmann's claim that he has never reconstructed "reality" in his film. Neither Lanzmann nor the critics who fawn after him seem to be conscious of the effects this editing arrangement--the disparate points of view and the order in which the shots are presented--has on spectators. The significant thing to note is that within the montage created by these three set-ups, spectators come to occupy a privileged or omniscient position--a point of view not available in reality. Film spectators, it could be argued, are produced at the moment they come to occupy this privileged viewing position. The combination of these three points of view enables us as viewers to simultaneously experience two separate realities along the law of causality. First we relate to the witness in set-up 1 who, remembering the cynical laugh of a Nazi officer, testifies that he watched the train's arrival and the Jews then being unloaded from the "death train" with relatively little trepidation. Next we relate to the witness in set-up 3 who testifies that he emerged in fear from the freight car as the doors were opened. The two different positions of the witnesses--the outside and inside of the freight car door--are combined through the "historical" shot/counter shot. As a result, the scene as a whole reconstructs any imaginary space for representing the hell of the Holocaust. The three shots are arranged to create an impossible encounter between witnesses 1 and 3 and the spectator. The witness in set-up 3 had just completed a long and arduous journey in the freight car only to discover, in horror and confusion, that death awaited him. On the other hand, the witness in set-up 1 watched the train's arrival from a relatively secure position. The two men here lack any basis for real encounter. The only place these two are able to come together is in the imaginary space of film montage. The film's editing creates a privileged position in which only the film spectator is capable of taking in this impossible encounter between witness 1 and witness 3.
　　At this point, we should make a short detour into film history to discuss the period when montage similar to that discussed above was first introduced to spectators and the enthusiastic reception it received. According to the film scholar Robert Sklar,4 we must go back in time more than eighty years. Film spectators in the modern sense were first "produced" with the completion of Judith of Bethulia (1913) directed by D. W. Griffith, the Father of American Cinema. Through the use of frequent and rapid changes in point of view as well as dazzling cutbacks, for the first time film spectators were able to relate simultaneously to characters in different situations. Films before Judith of Bethulia , such as Stop Thief! (James Williamson, 1901) and Rescued by Rover (Cecil Hepworth, 1905), depict action with dynamism and succeed in representing continuous space. But these films fail to insure a privileged viewing position for their spectators. Neither film can provide spectators with the viewing position of both a pursuer and that of a pursuee. They depict only an act of pursuit. As a result, spectators neither identify themselves with the pursuer nor with the pursuee. Through shifts in viewing positions, however, spectators of Judith of Bethulia can see the diegetic world from myriad points of view: that is, that of those surrounded inside the castle, those on the walls guarding the castle, those attacking from outside the castle, the attackers and the attacked, the crowd and the individual, from distance and proximity, above and below. Assembling diverse positions of different characters in a single film effectively expands the scope of a film. It is through experiencing such distinctive film montage that the film spectator in the modern sense was produced.
　　Therefore film history can be divided into pre-Griffith and post-Griffith periods. Shoah (in particular the scene discussed above), a post-1913 film, technically as well as chronologically, belongs to the post-Griffith period. In other words, the spectator is the one who reconciles positions, positions between which real encounter is lacking, perspectives that seem utterly different or irreconcilable. The spectator is the site where varied points of view are collected and manipulated. In reality, people are not able to enjoy the privilege of simultaneously being A, B, and C (an omniscience that can sometimes be startlingly chimeraesque). The transcendental integration of the different perspectives and positions is what determines the political positioning of the spectator in modern films. Film's enduring popularity is due to the special power it has to conjure up for spectators a privileged position in the world. Spielberg's films, whether about the Holocaust or about dinosaurs, consistently draw large audiences because they stimulate the imagination in these ways. To say that Spielberg's commercial films rely completely on the need in capitalist societies for spectacle is to merely point out the obvious. For film is by definition a medium that makes the invisible (such as emotion) visible .
　　The director of Shoah criticizes the director of Schindler's List for representing the Holocaust in such banal fashion that the Holocaust loses its singularity and becomes just another stereotype.5 Yet unfortunately Shoah itself, the film that purports to criticize Hollywood, fails to escape completely from the trap of banality. In particular, the banality of the editing in the train arrival scene in Shoah is so similar to that of Schindler's List that they could be taken for the same film. In fact Schindler's List contains many scenes which are structurally identical to the train arrival scene in Shoah. For example, a shot from the point of view of children who have been loaded on a truck to be taken to the gas chambers looking down on their mothers, is followed by a counter shot from the point of view of the mothers chasing behind the truck as it drives away. As we have discussed, this post-Griffith way of combining different positions through editing is present to a greater or lesser extent in almost all modern films.

�｡
　　Ignorance concerning film history runs high enough among those writing on Hollywood films to qualify as almost criminal. After seeing a movie about the Holocaust, these writers would behave as if they had actually experienced the Holocaust themselves. Despite the lack of any actual Holocaust experience, they would publish long detailed essays about it. On the screen we see only projected images; we hear only voices channeled through speakers behind the screen. Nevertheless, these writers mistakenly believe that through mechanical reproduction they have experienced reality. They fail to realize how film's combination of perspectives through editing can lead spectators down mistaken paths, influencing them to believe that what they are seeing is reality as experienced by their own eyes. If people honestly wish to talk about the reality of the Holocaust, instead of going to a movie theater, they would be better off interviewing those who actually experienced it. If people see a film about the Holocaust, before discussing the Holocaust itself, they should be conscious enough of the effects of film to first discuss what it means to see a film about the Holocaust.
　　In their rush to attack Spielberg, critics mistakenly see Shoah as untainted, a film with no connection to the brand of Hollywood films typified by Spielberg. As film viewers, their inability to see this error reveals a surprising weakness. Even respected critics such as Shoshana Felman turn their ears to the voice of Shoah as testimony, failing to note its status as film. Shoah, Felman correctly points out, is a film about the act of testifying. But in her essay "The Retrun of the Voice," she gives no thought to the issue of the film's status as a film and the conditions this status imposes on viewers.6 It is hard to believe that a critic like Felman who so masterfully deconstructs Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" could do such a poor job as viewer of Shoah. Witnesses who must have seen the coordinated murder of Jews report in Shoah on their experience in a way that describes many of the film's modern viewers: "We didn't see anything at all." This criminal lack of seeing is especially prevalent among viewers of Shoah.

�｢
　　We have discussed the witness waiting for the arrival of the train in a sequence of Shoah. It would be no mere coincidence that film history began nearly one hundred years earlier with a similar shot--waiting for the arrival of the train (Lumiere's L'Arrivee d'un train ). In their choices between and combination of points of view and looks, films are politically and technically reconstructed. In 1895, the camera itself did not move or adjust. With film editing still largely unutilized, objects (i.e. trains) were shot coming toward the fixed camera. The choice of this single point of view shot--the waiting position--seemed obvious during Lumiere's time. The option to shoot from cameras mounted on moving trains and trucks as seen in Shoah (set-up 2) and in Schindler's List is an option which became available only after a travelling shot was invented. The editing of the above-discussed three shots in a sequence of Shoah was unthinkable in the very early days of cinema before D. W. Griffith. The three-shot scene in Shoah shows us that the film, which follows post-Griffith patterns for the representation of time and of cause-and-effect relations, is edited in a way that produces an omniscient storytelling point of view. But does this mean that Shoah, taken as whole, fails as miserably as Schindler's List ?
　　Just as Spielberg's commercial film makes radical innovation on respected film tradition, Shoah contains a scene that compares favorably even to Yukiyukite Shingun (Hara Kazuo, 1987). The scene in Shoah conveying the testimony made by a barber stands out as powerfully as the scene in the Chaplin film The Dictator (1940) showing the "spectacle" of the barber in harmony with the music of "the Hungarian Rhapsody." To avoid misunderstanding, we should note that the comparison of these two scenes from Shoah and The Dictator is being made, not because the barbers in both cases happen to be Jewish, nor to compare documentary and fiction films, but because both sequences are shot with an incredibly long take. The two films, one completed in 1985, the other in 1940, both hark back to the pre-Griffith period, to Lumiere's unedited 1895 film L'Arrivee d'un train.
　　Unedited film denies the relay of the look. The point of view of the camera becomes the point of view of the spectator. The look is not complicated by relay through the look of characters in the diegesis. To the degree that the look of the interviewer (the director Lanzmann) steadily matches that of the camera on the barber (the survivor, the same person who witnessed in set-up 3 of the sequence discussed above), it is perfectly united with the look of the film spectator. Spectators are not put in a privileged viewing position in the barber sequence of Shoah, unlike in the freight train arrival scene of the film and the flashback sequence at the pawnshop. Spectators occupy no position other than that of the interviewer and the camera positioned inside the barbershop. Their position is not the double one created through editing in which spectators feel as if they were simultaneously watching the train from the outside as it arrived at the concentration camp and watching in fear and confusion from inside the train as people were unloaded. The barber sequence in Shoah does without any post-Griffith editing effects.
　　Over the course of the nine-minute long take of the barber, spectators exist in the same actual time as the interviewer who works to spark testimony. In the process of answering the questions put to him, the barber comes to strike an underwater reef in memory. When this most harrowing and frightening of memories, a memory meant to have been repressed, comes to the surface, the barber, seeing the reality of it, silently begins to cry. At this moment we come to share the fear and trembling of the barber as we realize that he was able to survive the hell only because he happened to be the one assigned to cut the hair of those sent to the gas chambers.
　　We come to appreciate the power of the film medium to offer us the close-up, a newly developed technique not possible in earlier media such as the novel and the stage play. The close-up enables the detailed projection of human emotion through expressions on the face. The close-up is the place for the expression of soul, a powerful tool facilitating empathy.7 Readers who might remain skeptical should definitely see the 1980s masterpiece, Diavolo in Corpo (Marco Bellocchio, 1985). The film tells a story in which people are saved, not by religion or science, but only through crying with one who cries. The soul can be redeemed through communion in tears. Despite being made of blood and tears, we live in a culture that brands as shameful the open shedding of tears. We bind up identity in the definite physical shape of our bodies, and as a result the culture abhors the shapeless liquid that comes out as tears. But isn't it possible that in some cases tears could save even those whom the blood of Christ cannot help? If we are able to cry with another, isn't this redemption for the soul? As we watch the pain in the face of the barber (through the close-up) over the course of the extraordinarily long take in Shoah, we find tears in our own eyes as well. At the very moment in this sequence when testimony is no longer possible, the moment of long silence, we watch as the barber wets his lips. The aging man had spoken relatively freely up until the point where he strikes upon the buried memory. As he prepares to speak the unspeakable, his tears and the dryness of his mouth strike us as unforgettable. The more than nine minutes of this extremely long shot are necessary in order to communicate the impossibility of speaking. In this moment Shoah, a film meant to testify, ironically testifies of the impossibility of testimony. If the barber sequence had been cut and reassembled similar to other parts of the film, all would have been lost. The deepest human fears lie at the boundary of what can and what cannot be spoken. The expression of this boundary requires the long, continuous look of the camera. The effectiveness of this sequence's uncut nature refutes the need for editing, enabling it to probe for the truth film can reveal. The spectator is not manipulated through the use of editing into occupying any privileged (and thus ironically, relativized) position. In this long take, a single definite reality is all that is offered.
　　Similarly, the unbroken, unedited long take of Chaplin deftly playing the barber to the strains of "the Hungarian Rhapsody" in The Dictator conveys the authenticity of Chaplin's incomparable technical genius. His performance transcends esoteric distinctions between documentary and fiction films, delivering nothing but pure truth.
　　Those who stood by as the extermination camps went about their business testify that they were "unable to see anything." Spectators and critics whose eyes and ears are trained toward ignorance in these same ways must have surely missed the moment when the barber paused to wet his lips. Just as those closest to the Holocaust, those who should have seen it, would testify that "we did not see anything." Those who focus their minds only on a film's content, oblivious to its status as a film and the editing devices it employs, will see nothing. After nine and a half hours with their eyes glued to the screen, these spectators still will not know what it means to see a film. And if people are unable to see, the day when somewhere on earth factories for the mass murder are reassembled will never be far off.

NOTES
A slightly altered Japanese version of this paper first appeared as "Hyosho mondai toshiteno horokosuto eiga," in Misuzu no. 420 (March 1996), pp. 72-87; and later the new version was included in my book Eiga to wa Nanika (What is the Cinema?) in 1996.

1 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1977) , pp. 54-56; Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema (London: Macmillan Press, 1981), pp. 119-120.
2 Cf., Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge U. P., 1989), pp. 29-38; Ilan Avisar, Screening the Holocaust : Cinema's Images of the the Unimaginable(Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1988), pp. 122-125.
3 See Claude Lanzmann, "Why Spielberg Has Distorted the Truth," in Guardian Weekly, 3 April. 1994.
4 Robert Sklar, Movie-made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (Vintage Books: New York, 1994), pp. 55-57.
5 See Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Schindler's List Is Not Shoah : The Second Commandment, Popular Modernism and Public Memory," in Critical Inquiry vol. 22, no. 2 (Winter 1996), pp. 292-312.
6 See Shoshana Felman, "The Retrun of the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah," in Feman and Dori Laub eds., Testimony: Cries of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York, 1992), pp. 204-83; and Dominick LaCapra's reading of Felman's essay, "Lanzmann's Shoah : 'Here There Is No Why'," in Critical Inquiry vol. 23, no. 2 (Winter 1997), pp. 245-250.
7 See Foster Hirsch, Acting Hollywood Style (New York: AFI Press, 1991), pp. 147-197.