Schindler’s List’s red coat girl

Save for the lighting of the Shabbat candles at the start of Schindler’s List and the survivors honouring Oskar Schindler by placing stones on his grave at the end, the only smudge of colour in Steven Spielberg’s 195-minute Holocaust drama is a little girl in a red coat meandering the streets during the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto.

The scene is presented through Schindler’s gaze. Sitting atop a horse on a hillside overlooking Podgórze (though actually filmed in the narrow, cobbled streets of Kazimierz as Podgórze had undergone modernisation), the German factory owner watches SS officer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) and his soldiers herd thousands of Jews. Suitcases are hurled from windows, guns pop and bodies fall, and through it all wanders the child in red: symbol of innocence; suggestive of the red flag waved by Jews at the Allied powers as a cry for help; the colour of spilt life.

“America and Russia and England all knew about the Holocaust when it was happening, and yet we did nothing,” said Spielberg of his choice to employ such a bold motif. “It was a large bloodstain on everyone’s radar. That’s why I wanted to bring the red in.”

This pivotal scene also signifies the moment when Schindler’s mindset switches to begin his journey from mercenary businessman to saviour of 1,200 Jewish lives. “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire,” says accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) – one of the film’s key themes and, indeed, its tagline – and it is the plight of this one little girl that, for Schindler, personalises the genocide.

Teaming with Polish DP Janusz Kaminski for the first time (they’ve made 15 movies together since), Spielberg decided against storyboarding any of the action and also jettisoned the use of Steadicam, cranes and zoom lenses during the 71-day shoot, with 40 per cent of the film shot on handheld cameras. Colour was refused for fear it would “beautify events”. The exception was this one scene, shot on colour emulsion and then painstakingly desaturated frame by frame. Some label it a gimmick but most agree it is one of the standout sequences of a picture that won seven Oscars and stands at number eight on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest Movies.