Godard's List: Why Spielberg and Auschwitz Are Number One

Godard has consistently voiced his disapproval of Spielberg's Schindler's List. Critics have noted this antipathy yet there is currently no detailed analysis of Godard Godard, Jean-Luc and Youssef, Ishaghpour. 2005. Cinema: The Archeology of Film and the Memory of a Century. Trans. JOHN HOWE, New York: Oberg. Google Scholar's specific objections. This article attempts to remedy this omission. In the first half, the author focuses on the motivation and logic that underpin Spielberg's film, paying particular attention to the qualms expressed in Godard's Éloge de l'amour over the moral and philosophical dubiousness of employing witness testimony as a means of recreating the past in the present. Then, in the second half, the author analyses the politics of identification in a selection of Godard's films to argue that Schindler's List is made ethically palatable for mainstream audiences through the use of manipulative erotic imagery. There, two critiques are brought together to suggest that Godard's primary objection to Schindler's List is that it constitutes an uplifting consideration of the Shoah that precludes a more serious rumination on an event that ruptures the histories of both the cinema and the twentieth century.