Lanzmann's Shoah after Twenty-Five Years: An Overview and a Further View

This review essay examines several features of Lanzmann's classic film, assessing the tensions between the director's choices in his film and his public statements outside the film. By employing a perspective taken from live theater and applying it to Lanzmann's treatment of the film's witnesses, and evaluating the structural and thematic influence of the historian Raul Hilberg, the author seeks to define the legacy of the film twenty-five years after its original release.