ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR
UK, 1987, 143 minutes, Colour.
Alan Arkin, Joanna Pacula, Rutger Hauer, Jack Shepard.
Directed by Jack Gold.
Escape From Sobibor is a large-scale telemovie based on life in the Polish concentration camp in 1943 and the mass escape from that camp. The screenplay is by Reginald Rose (Twelve Angry Men) and was directed by British Jack Gold (The Bofors Gun, The Naked Civil Servant and many other films and telemovies).
The telemovie won several Golden Globe awards including one for actor Rutger Hauer, playing a sympathetic role rather than the heavies or villains (Flesh and Blood, Blade Runner, Night Hawks). There is a good leading performance by Alan Arkin. He heads an international cast led by Joanna Pacula (Gorky Park, Not Quite Jerusalem).
The film re-creates the atmosphere of the camp, has a large cast portraying the prisoners, focuses also on the brutality of the SS guards.
Though coming late in the day in films about World War Two, this film shows, quite relentlessly the experience of living in the prisoner-of-war camp, the atrocities and the exterminations, the need for escape and survival.
1. The impact of this telemovie? Re-creation of World War Two? The Jews in Europe? The concentration camps? Life in Sobibor? The re-creation of the escape?
2. Production values for the telemovie: the use of Yugoslav locations for Poland, the rebuilding of a concentration camp? The authentic atmosphere of the period - costumes and decor or those arriving in the camp? The musical score and choral background?
3. The title and the focus on the concentration camp, on the build-up to the escape and the irony of the camp being closed?
4. How well did the film re-create the camp: the opening with the trains arriving, the Strauss music, the welcome of the SS and its irony? The bewildered crowds? Asking for professional people to step forward? Their separation from the rest? The march to the showers? The naked line-up, the clothes and effects, the gas chambers and the smoke? Audience response to this extermination?
5. Life in the camp: survival, the professional people working together, the demands of the soldiers for clothes, jewellery, shoes? The sorting of the garments? The pressures on the inmates? The raising of various prisoners to the title of Kapo? Their relationship with the prisoners? The brutality of the officers? The line-ups, the supervision, the work, the humiliations? The build-up for the need to escape?
6. The focus on a group of central characters and audiences identifying with them? Understanding the-experience through them? Alan Arkin as Leon? His background, in the camp, the story of his family's death? His leadership qualities? His looking on to the atrocities? His relationship with the various men in the camp? The desire for escape? His inspiration, leadership, the plan for 600 to escape? Marshalling people, elaborating the plan? The reliance on Sasha? The preparations, the beginning of the executions, the killing of the guards, the need for timing, things going right, things going wrong? The beginning of the escape?
7. The sketch of the various characters like Isaak? Arrival, shoemaker, his relationship with Samuel? The boys and their working on the jewellery? The other boys as servants? The demands, the brutal treatment with the whips? The humiliations? The boy's discovery of the line-up for the showers? Grief and anger? The portrayal of the Kapos and their relationship with the people? The women and their sewing, the woman concerning the baby and its being shot by the officer? Death, the finding of love?
8. Sasha and the Russian soldiers, their different perspective, friendship with the prisoners, the-plans, working together? The beginning of the plan, the killings?
9. The prisoners bringing themselves to kill the officers? The uncertainty, the brutality? The discovery? The beginning of the escape, the previous escapes and the brutal executions? The pathos of the scene where the 13 escapees had to choose companions in death? Martyrdom? The mass escape, the shootings, the wire fences, the mines, the escape into the forest?
10. The aftermath of the escape from Sobibor? The brutal commander and his watching helpless as the prisoners escaped? 300 escaping? 300 dying? The information given about some of the survivors - to the 1980s or lost during the war? To Israel? The closing down of the concentration camp?
11. The film's comment on the Third Reich, the Nazi mentality, the superiority of the Master Race? The presentation of the Jews, their being persecuted? Ordinary people and their inexperience of such things, arriving at the camps, their deaths? The film as a spur to conscience about World War Two and the holocaust?
