A Film Unfinished Review: Which Film is the Unfinished One?

In 1942, a Nazi film crew shot footage of Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto. The footage was stored in an underground vault in the forest. The unfinished film was simply titled, The Ghetto. For decades after World War II, the footage was presented as fact. However, in 1998 a missing reel was discovered, exposing the film to be Nazi propaganda.

This is the subject matter of Yael Hersonski’s documentary, A Film Unfinished. The film explores the contrast of the footage of The Ghetto - the presentation of Jewish life is that of luxury and complete poverty – as it tries to uncover the purpose of the film and who ordered its creation, for The Ghetto contains no narrative, no musical accompaniment, no clues to its purpose. As Hersonski pushes deeper into the film’s history, she discovers journals written by Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Jewish council put in place by the Nazis to run the Warsaw ghetto, and the transcript of Willy Wist's testimony from one of the post-war trials of Nazi officers. Wist was one of the cameramen that shot the footage for The Ghetto.

Combining the extra footage, the testimony, and the journals, Hersonski is able to piece together details of the film’s creation turning A Film Unfinished into more of a making-of documentary for the Nazi propaganda film rather than an account of life in the Warsaw ghetto.

Unfortunately, it takes the film quite a while to discover its story. The first third of the film is little more than a summary of history: the Nazis imprisoned Jews in overcrowded city blocks, these were called ghettos, this is what the Holocaust is. The opening of the film feels unnecessary and sets up the wrong expectations for the film. These expectations are further led astray by the inclusion of several Holocaust survivors that lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Hersonski shows the footage of The Ghetto to them and records their reactions.

The presence of the survivors and the historical refresher create the idea that this film is going to show the true depiction of life in the Warsaw ghetto. This is not what the film does. Instead, what Hersonki explores is the process of making The Ghetto and its intended purpose.

The actual footage the German soldiers shot is quite compelling. The picture it paints of the Warsaw ghetto is one of extreme disparity. There are seemingly only two levels of existence for the Jewish people living there: extreme wealth or extreme destitution. There are images of people dressed in fine suits and dresses walking past those in rags without ever looking at them. People are pulled around in handcarts by those less fortunate. It seems to create a depiction of complete callousness. Those that were wealthy cared nothing for the unfortunate people below them – those people were no better than the trash and filth littered across the street. This footage offers the idea that Jews were cruel people that didn’t even care for each other.

The discovery of the missing reel reveals the truth. On the reel is the unedited footage, which reveals scenes done over multiple times from different angles – different takes. Also, the filmmakers are caught by the lens on occasion, seen offering direction to the people in the film.

All of this is very polarizing. It is very fascinating to see the extent to which scenes were orchestrated, but at the same time it is horrible to see what these people were subjected to in the scenes. For instance, there is a scene in which crowds of people are forced to walk by the dead lying on the sidewalk, but are not allowed to look down, to acknowledge the dead’s presence or offer any kind of respect. Hersonki plays this footage multiple times throughout the film. It is at first shocking to see people act with such disregard for one another, but, once the true nature of the scene is revealed, it becomes tragic and heartbreaking to watch.

But the most polarizing element of the film is not one of the Nazi’s creation but of Hersonski’s.

The inclusion of the survivors of in the film feels not only unnecessary but quite cruel. Their purpose seems to be to reveal what life was truly like in the Warsaw ghetto. However, since the documentary is more about the creation of the Nazi propaganda rather than the ghetto itself, these accounts feel superfluous. Also, it is one thing to conduct an interview and ask these people to recall these horrors. It is quite another to put it up on a screen in front of them. It feels exploitive. Never more so than during the footage of the dead bodies being collected from the streets and buried in mass graves.

Hersonski films the survivors watching this footage (or not watching rather, as many could not bare to look at the screen) so that she can record their anguish. One must wonder why? Why subject these people to that? It serves no purpose to the goals of the documentary, which are about uncovering the truth of the creation of the film, not these people’s lives. At this moment, Hersonski’s film is on par with the Nazis' The Ghetto, exploiting the Jewish people to further the impact of the film.

Hersonski’s film is unsure of what it is. It tries to tell the story of creation of this film but also tries to be a Holocaust documentary at times. It sets up the idea of the Holocaust and ghettos and then abandons it to pursue the propaganda, only to clumsily return to those original ideas with the inclusion of the survivors.

These inconsistencies ask the question: with the title – A Film Unfinished – is Hersonski referring to the Nazi propaganda film or her own?