A Film Unfinished - 3 smiles

Yael Hersonski’s documentary “A Film Unfinished” revolves around the reels discovered in a German vault: Nazi footage of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 where half a million starving Jews squeezed into three square miles. Many of the scenes on these reels were staged by members of Hitler’s propaganda ministry. In fact, you can see some of them caught on film as the images roll by. No one knows for sure how this film was to be used, but best guess, according to Hersonski, is the Nazis meant to illustrate how well-to-do Jews lived, such as eating in fancy restaurants and enjoying the theater while poor Jews starved to death under their feet. Hersonski juxtaposes the Reich’s attempt to tell the story from their perspective with testimony of those who saw it being filmed. These witnesses recall that they were directed to dress up and look like they were having a good time or to coldly walk by the beggars or corpses in the street. As the cameramen strive to capture manufactured truths (Hersonski shows that many scenes required multiple takes), the film also reveals heartbreaking realities: a mother wandering the street with her baby in her arms, crying for food; the shrunken faces, huge eyes and enlarged ears of a people being systematically starved to death; a mass grave outside the city with rail-thin bodies sliding down a long chute. “A Film Unfinished” clearly demonstrates that what you see, especially historical footage, does not always equal the truth. 8/20/10