On Fri, 10 Jun 1994, Sylvia Swift wrote:
 
> Aside from the obvious "psychological" meaning of the red coat which has
> already been pointed out (that is, that it suggests that Schindler
> himself is able to see one of the herd in the ghetto as an individual,
> and when he/we later see her dead body in a heap of others he/we can see
> the whole heap/the whole camp apparatus differently)
 
Nothing personal, Sylvia, but I've been waiting for someone to bring up
this point, which I've seen in other fora in the past several months.
Fact is:  Schindler's p.o.v. and the camera's on the red-coat girl are
not the same.  We follow that girl through the whole of the
liquidation-of-the-ghetto sequence and then into a house and up some
stairs and into an apartment and under a bed where she covers her ears.
Schindler couldn't have seen the last parts of this -- and these parts,
are, I think, the *most* objectionable ones, muppett-izing this poor
child in nearly fantasy fashion.  *Maybe* Schindler noticed the girl from
his horseback mount up on the hill, but the cutting isn't precise enough
for us to *really* know that.  As for her second appearance, I'm not sure
Schindler ever sees her, but the audience is meant to.  I think in this
moment, Speilberg's relative restraint almost saves the gambit, but in
sum I must agree with the earlier post that said that what is wrenchingly
human about the atrocities in the film -- and the holocaust in general --
is not the specific death of a sole person but the vast, barbaric totality.
 
Besides, I always thought the girl in the red coat was supposed to be Ted
Turner's mother....:-)
 
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