Kapo

Gillo Pontecorvo's take on the Holocaust is, not surprisingly, grim, dark and depressing. Still not in the same league as The Battle of Algiers (but what is?), it's a fascinating study of guilt, collaboration and human atrocity.

Edith (Susan Strasburg) is a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France who comes home to find her family being arrested, and she is forced to join them. Arriving at a death camp, she watches her parents gassed, and with the help of a doctor assumes the identity of Nicole, a recently-deceased, now-Jewish criminal. Edith goes to a labor camp and gradually adapts to its cruelties: she becomes a plaything of camp guards, and works her way up to Kapo (camp guard). However, the death of her friend Terese (Emmanuelle Riva) and the arrival of Russian POWs - including Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), whom she falls in love with - convinces Edith to help her fellow inmates escape.

Kapo is more subtle than most Holocaust films, which granted isn't saying a lot. Explicit atrocities are mostly hinted at, but the film retains a horrible power throughout, with Pontecorvo's sparse but powerful direction driving the story. Until the bloody conclusion, most atrocities are individual: the hanging of a woman for attempted sabotage, and Terese's being forced to translate the commandant's speech, is arguably the high-point of the film. The only SS man we get to know is Karl (Gianni Garko), a likeable if blindly patriotic young man who romances Edith; guilt for the Holocaust is made starkly collective, rather than the whims of a psychotic camp leader.

Another unique aspect of Kapo is its morally ambiguous portrayal of the inmates. Unlike Schindler's List (certainly a fine film in its own way), Edith and her camp mates are not virtuous victims but degraded people. They are reduced to an animal state, squabbling constantly, gaining petty revenges against each other, becoming comfort women for promises of food and shelter, and finally murdering the SS's beloved cat. Terese becomes an interpreter for its "special privileges" but ultimately can't stand the guilt and shame involved; Edith's metamorphosis into a cold-blooded collaborator is chillingly believable, staunched only by dramatic events.

The movie effectively explores why a Jewish girl would agree to oppress her own people: In an environment where death is so casual and certain, collaboration is the only option. In effect, the victims are made part of the collective guilt, making an already-murky situation indecipherable: when an SS guard is more likeable than most of the inmates, cliches of bad Nazis and good Jews don't apply. Even something as straightforward as the Holocaust isn't morally black-and-white, Pontecorvo shows.

The movie's powerful, inventive first half dips back towards convention in the second half, as Edith gropes her way back towards virtue. The movie avoids good-and-evil classifications in the early sections, but certainly becomes more clear-cut later. Personally, I would have found it more powerful (and certainly more original) if Edith had remained on her path to evil. That said, one can't really deny the power of the ending, the wonderfully-staged prison break and Edith's final words.

Susan Strasburg gives a marvellous performance. Early on she's given a close haircut reminiscent of Renee Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc, but Edith is no martyr, merely a girl trying desperately to stay alive, and her shift from innocent victim to complicit camp guard is chillingly credible. The movie does not make Nicole overly sympathetic, even in the early scenes; it's her change of heart that renders her such, and Pontecorvo and Strasburg render this beautifully.

Other performances are equally fine. Gianni Garko (later a major Spaghetti Western star) does a fine job at making Karl a decent guy, without veering into "good German" cliches. Emmanuelle Riva is excellent as Terese, whose collaboration becomes personally unbearable.

Kapo is one of the best fictional films made on the Holocaust. Even if it resorts to convention towards the end, it's still far more complex and ambiguous than most other films on the topic, and remains a starkly powerful work.