Review – Imaginary Witness

This is an excellent documentary about Hollywood’s treatment of the Holocaust, starting even before the war and ending with Schindler’s List and its progeny. The evolution of mainstream American media’s relationship with the evils of Nazism remains consistently uneasy, though the reasons for the ill-ease shift from era to era. The clips and talking heads do a great job of exposing the country’s discomfort with anti-anti-Semitism in the 30s and 40s, the suppressed guilt of the 50s and 60s, and then the open confrontation of even the more horrible aspects of the tragedy starting in the 70s. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t do more with the commercialization of the Holocaust following Spielberg’s award-winner, but otherwise this was some really good work. Worth seeing