66th Academy Awards · 1994
Schindler's List
Directed byCooked up by Steven Spielberg
“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
“He saved more than a thousand lives. Real hero. 🕯️”
The storyThe lore 📖
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
This is the true story of Oskar Schindler, a businessman who first cared mostly about making money during World War II. As he saw the terrible cruelty of the Holocaust, he changed completely and used his factory and his fortune to protect the Jewish people who worked for him. He saved over a thousand lives. The most real redemption arc in history. 🕯️
What critics & audiences sayThe receipts 🧾
Tomatometer
98%
Fresh
#5 of 98 winnersFamous linesLines living rent free
It's Hebrew from the Talmud. It says, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.
The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.
I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just … I could have got more.
This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. … This pin. Two people. … I could have gotten one more person... And I didn't!
Power is when we have every justification to kill... and we don't.
Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power. Amon the Good.
Goeth: I pardon you.
Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it.
Stern: By law, I have to tell you, sir, I'm a Jew.
Schindler: Well, I'm a German, so there we are.
My father was fond of saying you need three things in life. A good doctor, a forgiving priest, and a clever accountant.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Filming locationsWhere they shot it 📍
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Kraków
Poland
Principal photography began here in March 1993, with the crew shooting at or near the actual historical locations.
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Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory
Kraków, Poland
Exteriors and the scenes on the factory stairs were filmed at Schindler's actual factory.
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Abandoned quarry near Płaszów
Kraków, Poland
The Płaszów camp was rebuilt in a nearby quarry because high-rise apartments were visible from the original site.
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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Oświęcim, Poland
A replica of part of the camp was built just outside the Birkenau entrance to avoid filming inside the death camp.
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Olkusz
Poland
A similar enamelware facility here was used for interior shots of Schindler's Kraków factory.
Fun factsFacts that go hard 🤓
- When John Williams told Steven Spielberg, "You need a better composer than I am for this film," Spielberg replied, "I know. But they're all dead!" Williams's score, with Itzhak Perlman on violin, won him his fifth Oscar.Wikipedia · Soundtrack
- Universal's Sid Sheinberg greenlit the film only on condition that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first, and Spielberg spent several hours each evening in Poland editing the dinosaur film.Wikipedia · Development
- Spielberg refused a salary for the film, calling it "blood money," and believed it would fail; made for $22 million, it earned over $321 million worldwide.Wikipedia · Development
- Spielberg tried to hand the project to Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese, who was attached in 1988; Spielberg then traded Scorsese the remake of Cape Fear to get it back.Wikipedia · Development
- Ralph Fiennes looked so much like Amon Göth in costume that when Holocaust survivor Mila Pfefferberg met him, she trembled with fear.Wikipedia · Casting
- The girl in the red coat, played by three-year-old Oliwia Dąbrowska, was colored by hand-rotoscoping; Spielberg asked her not to watch the film until she was eighteen, but she saw it at eleven and was "horrified."Wikipedia · The girl in red
- Robin Williams phoned Spielberg during the shoot to cheer him up given the profound lack of humor on set, and Spielberg later thanked his wife Kate Capshaw "for rescuing me ninety-two days in a row."Wikipedia · Filming
- Forty percent of the film was shot handheld, and Spielberg banned Steadicams, elevated shots and zoom lenses, which he called "everything that for me might be considered a safety net."Wikipedia · Cinematography
- The film's success led Stanley Kubrick to abandon his own Holocaust project, Aryan Papers; Kubrick reportedly quipped that the Holocaust is about six million who were killed, while Schindler's List "is about 600 who don't."Wikipedia · Assessment by other filmmakers
- Spielberg pulled the film from Philippine cinemas rather than accept censors' cuts, until President Fidel V. Ramos personally ruled it could be shown uncut to anyone over 15.Wikipedia · Controversies