Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust
| Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Daniel Anker |
| Produced by | Daniel Anker, Ellin Baumel |
| Starring | Gene Hackman (narrator: voice) |
| Music by | Andrew Barrett |
| Cinematography | Tom Hurwitz, Nancy Shreiber |
| Edited by | Bruce Shaw |
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Production
company |
Anker Productions, Inc.
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Release date
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May 6, 2004 (First Film Festival screening) |
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Running time
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92 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
May 6, 2004 (First Film Festival screening)
April 5, 2005 (U.S. cable television release)
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust is a 2004 documentary film directed by Daniel Anker and narrated by Gene Hackman that examines the treatment of the Holocaust in Hollywood films over a period of sixty years and the impact of the films on public perception and thinking, and vice versa. The film was originally produced for the American cable network, American Movie Classics.
Director and film-maker Daniel Anker's father was a refugee from Germany, and many of his relatives, including his great-grandfather, uncle, and cousin died in the Holocaust, but he had not considered making a film on the subject until AMC approached him with the idea. His past projects on issues including campaign finance reform and racism, convinced the AMC leadership that he was the right person for the project, and they agreed to leave "the specifics of the project to him."
According to Anker, he was inspired by the documentary technique employed in the film Visions of Light—a documentary about films and film-makers—and made the decision to use extended clips from Holocaust movies to tell his story. He included interviews with some of the people who worked on the films he chose, including directors Sidney Lumet and Steven Spielberg and actors including Rod Steiger.
As Anker shows in the film, Hollywood did not only tell stories about the Holocaust, it actually helped to document the war. "Directors Frank Capra, John Huston, Billy Wilder, and George Stevens all worked for the Army Signal Corps' motion picture unit. So important did the US government consider their work that after liberation, film crews went into concentration camps even before medical teams. In the portion of the film describing the initial screenings of their footage back in the U.S., a portion narrated by film editor Stanley Frazen and screenwriter Melvin Wald, Wald says that "It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen, because the inmates walking in their black and white uniforms were like ghosts," and Frazen admits that he had to leave the projection room to vomit.
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