Claude Lanzmann: Self
Photos
Quotes
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I have made the film but the film made me.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I lived all these months after the end of "Shoah" like a bereavement, as a matter of fact. It took me a very long time to be able to recover.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I remember the day the film was finished. It was like a bereavement. You cannot finish a film like "Shoah" exploding with joy, no, no. I had worked for 12 years in a strange mixture of complete emergency and extreme patience too. I had to lie to everybody. You have to promise people, "I will finish next year, next year." After two years you are not finished. Four years, five, six, seven years, you are not finished. I had to follow my own line. My own law. I was proud of what I achieved. This, yes. It is the deep truth. But joy... Joy is something else.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : When I say that it took me 12 years to create this film, you need to have a very special relationship with time. I, one way, I said for me, time stopped. I don't know when. But something happened in my life which stopped the passing of time.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : This is the way everything happened. "Shoah" is a commissioned work. After all, Rembrandt did work on commission. I had made a film about Israel. In extraordinary difficult conditions. But in the end, it was a beautiful film. Alouph Hareven, who was the director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he called me and he said listen, your movie is wonderful and I want to propose something to you. I would like someone to make a film not about the Shoah but a film that would be the Shoah. That is to say which would be the Shoah seen through our own eyes. Seen through Jewish eyes. Never would I have imagined making a movie on the Shoah and besides I knew nothing about the Shoah. I knew what everybody knew, six million Jews. That was a very heavy decision to make because it was a decision that meant I would give up everything. And I had to really throw myself into something completely unknown with no guarantee whatsoever, without knowing anything and letting go of all caution and routine. And I walked for a whole night in Paris. I remember it very well. Because I had to give him my answer. I walked, walked, walked, walked for a whole night. And I called Hareven in Jerusalem and told him I was going to do it. That was the summer of 1973.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : Why should I be optimistic? I am not optimistic. I will have to die. I hate this idea. But, I am full of life. I have a strong "vitalité".
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I am not optimistic. I am not optimistic for the state of the world.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : [Last lines] We lived in a very difficult time. A very difficult century. But at least it was an epic time. And there was a greatness in this.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I was telling myself, "Very well, I agreed to do this, but what is my theme? The heart of the Shoah, what is it?" "Shoah" is not a movie about survival. And it is not a movie about survivors. And the survivors are not in "Shoah". "Shoah" is a film about death. Nobody came back alive from from a gas chamber. The people would arrive and within three hours a transport of 5,000 people is gassed. But these people have never known Auschwitz. They don't even know where they are. They don't know where they will die. They are not aware of their own death. This is very important. And the others knew they were in Auschwitz but they never knew about the gas chambers. That was when I understood what the theme of the film was.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I got very close to people, men from the "Sonderkommandos," who were the special unit who were charged with the maintenance of the extermination, the work in the incinerators, who led people up to the gas chambers... The Sonderkommandos who talk in "Shoah" never tell their personal story. They are the spokesmen for the dead.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I didn't know how to film this scene with Abraham Bomba, because it was very difficult. What he had to say, the things he had seen were at the very limit of inhumanity. Then the idea came to me that I could film the scene in a barbershop. Because he cut women's hair in the gas chamber with scissors. He didn't shave them. So he had to carry out the same actions. And very often feelings give rise to gestures. But, the opposite can also be true. Carrying out actions can release memories of events that happened.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : I always felt that it would be impossible to make this film without the Nazis being in it. The killers, I quickly understood, by definition, don't talk. Fortunately, a French engineer invented a special hidden camera that you don't need to hold up to your eye, which was called Paluche. First of all, I got hold of some fake papers, I had a false passport with another name. I made up an organization, the Institute for Contemporary History. I got close to the Nazis by telling them that one of the researchers from the Institute was writing a thesis on the achievements of the Wehrmacht during the war.
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Claude Lanzmann, Himself : The editing of a film such as this was very difficult. There was so much material that I had to watch and re-watch many times over and over dozens of times. Because there was only one way that was the right way and I couldn't find it.
