Shoah (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

An Essential Holocaust Documentary Gets The Criterion Treatment With Three Additional Bonus Films
It seems hard to imagine that it's taken this long to get an updated presentation (whether on DVD or Blu-ray) of the monumental Holocaust documentary "Shoah." The only North American DVD release was ten years ago and, although it is still available, it boasts a hefty suggested retail selling price of $150. It's good to see the Criterion label court such a significant piece of film history, and it's even better to see the attention paid to making this a necessary upgrade. There are loads of Bonus Features in addition to a restored 4K digital film transfer. Released in 1985, this epic experience from filmmaker Claude Lanzmann was over ten years in the making. Debuting with a run time of over nine hours, it is an incredibly immersive and emotionally exhausting experience. It focuses primarily on three particular concentration camps, with insight into a myriad of topics including deportation, methodology, and the Warsaw Ghetto among many others.

Needless to say, there have...

Magnificent! For those who owned the previous MoC DVD Set, the Criterion Collection Blu-ray release is so much better!
"Shoah", the biblical world translates to "calamity" and in Hebrew, it is the term to describe the Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews during World War II by Nazi Germany.

The word is also the title of French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's 1985 nine and a half hour documentary, an oral history of the Holocaust. A documentary hailed as one of the greatest and most important documentaries ever made, others calling it a masterpiece and a film that has been critically praised worldwide.

The film would win "Best Documentary" and win the "Special Award" at the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and would win "Best Documentary" at the National Society of Film Critics Awards and International Documentary Association.

And now this epic and important documentary, "Shoah" will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the United States courtesy of The Criterion Collection.

In 1974, Lanzmann began...

Everyone should see this movie.
When Shoah first came out, and Siskel and Ebert made their "Top 10 Films of the Year" list, they began the show by saying: This year there's Shoah, and everything else!

How true.

Shoah is literally the one film EVERYONE should see - ONCE! (I doubt anyone could bear to sit through it a second time. It's that powerful.)

And don't worry about graphic images. There's actually none in the picture. Instead it's a series of interviews with survivors, witnesses, by-standers, and even concentration camp guards. Some of it is chilling, some of it is bleak, some of it is infuriating, all of it is POWERFUL!

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