The Last Stage (1948)

[Gold Trumpet]

There are many fictional movies that are made right after a historical event and so allow themselves the chance to take articles of the real history to their movies, but the Last Stage is beyond anything I've ever seen of this order. It's the first film ever made about the Holocaust. Done in Poland in 1948, the film was not only filmed at the actual Auschwitz camp, it housed actors who were survivors of the Auschwitz and as the director said, they "simply stepped back into their roles of being camp participants and recreated a lot of their old roles." The actors were very helpful to the assistant directors because their experiences allowed them to do all the necessary research about living in a Holocaust camp. To make the actors even feel closer to their experiences, the crew were able to get a lot of old Holocaust garments that they were forced to wear. The clothes were disinfected but still retained a lot of their original bloodstains and bad odor from being used. The director said it created a haunting feeling for everyone involved.

When the director had to go about casting German guards, they actually hired German soldiers who were POW's during the war and newly released. When they had to step into the role, the director said it was too easy for them to get back into the old mindset and things on set became way too frightening, but the director (a camp survivor herself) wanted to recreate as much of her history as possible. The idea of doing a film shortly after the Holocaust became her mission and originally was planned as just a documentary, but manifested itself with a lengthy screenplay that tried to articulate a lot of her memories and experiences. Because the Germans themselves recorded a lot of documentary footage of the Holocaust, this fictional history is even more fascinating because Wanda Jakubowska sets precedents everywhere for how much history and reality you can use when trying fictionalize something.

As for the film itself, there are a lot of good moments. The black and white photography on location proves for some harrowing images that not even time and Hollywood imagination can duplicate. The film not only recreates the images of Holocaust history that we know via documentary footage, but it puts in smaller grotesque moments, like when people are ordered out of the camps by the thousands and an orchestra band (on site with prisoners as the musicans) playing German propaganda music to celebrate their leaving. I don't know what imagination could have conjured that up, but this film makes itself invaluable for its smaller details. On the other side it has a melodramatic story that has little imagination beyond what a lot of other films from the time period were featuring. If the film could have been privy to later styles by later filmmakers, it could have made more out its vast resources, but time plants this film into the time period in which it was made. I'll choose to be happy with the positives of its value instead of minor negatives of its style and story structure.

Information about the making of the film was taken from a recent book on Polish Cinema and the Holocaust. Yet to be published so can't reference it just yet.

[Pubrick]

sounds like an excellent rediscovery but i had to wiki it and then do a bit more research to really understand what kind of movie this is. a bit more background could be helpful to put it into context.

it's not very easy to find here so it'll be hard to give it a leg up like i tried with Come and See.

why did you pick this film? did that other rediscovery make you look up other forgotten ww2 films? that would be a great series idea.. depressing maybe, but more interesting than the annual month-long slog through horror films which is starting to feel more and more forced with every passing year.

[Pas]

Good post I'll definitely check the film out... must be a torrent somewhere.

Good idea for the forgotten WW2 classics series P... there many european and even more soviet classics in that category. I could definitely make a rapidshare link of 3-5 soviet hard to find soviet WW2 films that are really, really good. Including Come and See for sure.

[Gold Trumpet]

why did you pick this film? did that other rediscovery make you look up other forgotten ww2 films? that would be a great series idea.. depressing maybe, but more interesting than the annual month-long slog through horror films which is starting to feel more and more forced with every passing year.

I'm helping edit a book that is being written by a film scholar on Polish Holocaust films. The scholar himself is from Poland and English isn't his first language but he's writing the book in English anyways so he wants me look over his book chapter by chapter for its readability to American readers and also I'm suppose to give him comments on his arguments when I believe they are necessary.

His main expertise is Kieslowski and Peter Weir but he's revisiting Polish cinema and I get to read his chapters plus watch all the corresponding films. I will be able to post on other films here (I'm going over another chapter and film this weekend) but I will have to limit the detail and speak in generalities that anyone could know about the film if they did general research. The backstory astounded me to this film so much that I had to relay some of it. Also, it should be noted, but the film is a Soviet propaganda film too. Made with Polish nationality, but heavily favoring Communist ethics in the face of heavy Fascist criticism. It's also mainly good because of its sociological implications. The film itself is pure melodrama.