Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Shoah: Four Sisters Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 23, 2019

Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah is one of the undeniable monoliths of 20th century documentary filmmaking, a harrowing set of interviews Lanzmann conducted with various survivors of the Holocaust, all told in a relatively minimalist style that probably only adds to the visceral impact of listening to the tragedies these people were forced to endure. As if the actual content of Shoah weren’t devastating enough, Lanzmann had so much material at his disposal that the film ran for over nine hours, necessitating screenings to often be split over subsequent days, with Part One showing on one day and then Part Two on the next in many markets (the film was so long each part had an intermission, at least in some screenings). Perhaps amazingly, then, it has become apparent in the decades subsequent to the initial release of Shoah that Lanzmann had considerably more interview material in his archives, and what have been called “Shoah satellite” pieces like A Visitor From the Living started appearing in the late 1990s. Shoah: Four Sisters is perhaps too strongly linked to its progenitor to even be termed a “satellite”, since it follows in the same frightening footsteps as the longer piece, giving voice to a quartet of women who managed to survive almost unimaginable horrors, all while quite young. (One of the interesting things about watching Shoah: Four Sisters is seeing how relatively youthful these survivors, and indeed Lanzmann himself, are in the film, since so many of us interested in the Holocaust or with survivors in our own families are used by now to only seeing rather elderly people in this particular demographic.)

Each of the four women in this piece is granted a separate interview, and Lanzmann, as was his wont in the original Shoah, can at times be somewhat provocative in his questioning. For example, in his interview with Ruth Elias, arguably the best known of the four interview subjects, Elias talks about her father's sausage making factory in the pre-War world, and Lanzmann kind of insouciantly asks if it was a kosher factory. (It wasn't). Elias, along with the other three women, is at times almost dissociatively calm in her recountings of truly horrifying experiences in various camps (I'm not going to get into much of the individual traumas these brave women endured, other than to say that in Elias' case, she was forced to make something akin to a Sophie's Choice.) Lanzmann is a quietly prodding force throughout all four interviews, quite often smoking in the background, but evincing some very moving and probably unavoidably troubling anecdotes from the women.

What is so viscerally moving about all of the stories related is the intensity of hearing a first person account, often including supposedly mundane things about otherwise epochal events that actually makes everything all the more “real”. Some of the tales are just flat out weird (as opposed to squirm inducing), with, for instance, Ada Lichtman surrounded by dolls in parts of her interview since she was tasked with “refurbishing” toys taken from Jewish children in order to make them “useful” for German kids. It’s just unsettling on any number of levels, and the acts of “testifying” these women offer seem like very real, and very heroic, attempts to not just document what they went through, but to offer resistance, a very palpable resistance, to any of the ideologies that were being exploited which led to the Holocaust. As such, one of the things that struck me about all four of these women is how elegant and poised they were, even when there are occasional (understandable) emotional breakdowns.

With either Holocaust deniers or at least Holocaust “minimizers” still getting tons of bandwidth and/or media notice globally these days, these first person accounts of Nazi atrocities in World War II become more than a mere history lesson: they are a testament to the truth of horrifying personal experiences, experiences which instantly and to my mind irrefutably put the lie to anyone who would tend to trivialize what Jews and other oppressed minorities went through in various camps. Needless to say, neither the original Shoah nor this aggregation of four stories is an “easy” watch, but it is perhaps more than ever a necessary one.

Shoah: Four Sisters Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shoah: Four Sisters is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. I haven't been able to track down much authoritative data on the technical side of things, but Shoah was originally shot on 16mm, and at least some of this presentation looks to have been sourced from the same smaller format. As such, detail and especially fine detail levels can vary pretty dramatically, and there are some pretty noticeable generalized differences between some of the separately filmed interview sequences. For instance, the beachside interview with Paula Biren has marginal clarity and detail levels at times (see screenshot 12 for one example), along with a slighly splotchy looking grain field that isn't really in evidence in the other three "episodes". With an emphasis on close-ups, even with some variable clarity, certain fine details like fabrics on chairs or dresses can look quite good. The palette is a bit faded looking at times, skewed slightly toward browns at various moments. There is occasional minor but noticeable age related wear and tear, arguably most evident in the Elias interview, where a number of white flecks appear with fair regularity, often around Elias' face or mouth.

Shoah: Four Sisters Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The back cover of Shoah: Four Sisters lists DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, but I think that is probably just a template that was incorrectly ported over to this release, as the only audio I was able to find was an LPCM 2.0 mono track that is either in English or Hebrew, depending on the preferred language of the interview subject (optional English subtitles are unfortunately only utilized for the Hebrew sections, and I personally would have preferred them to have been available for some of the pretty heavily accented English language sections as well). There's not much to the sound mix here, other than Lanzmann's questions, and the often harrowing answers, though there are a fair number of ambient environmental sounds including things like background clatter and even the more appealing sounds of water at the beach. Fidelity is fine, with no damage to report.

Shoah: Four Sisters Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Conversation with Henri-Bernard Levy (1080p; 55:24) is moderated by Deborah Lipstadt at the Streicker Center, and includes some comments by Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Temple Emanuel as well (the Rabbi mentions the relatively recent shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh).


• Shoah: Four Sisters Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:38)

Note: Both supplements can be found on Disc Two of this two disc set.

Shoah: Four Sisters Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It has been my privilege to have been asked by a local Rabbi here in Portland to be a reader at a number of Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies which are held annually on Yom ha Shoah (this year's event was on May 1 and May 2), and it has been a real struggle for me at times to maintain emotional equilibrium as I'm reading absolutely devastating accounts from survivors who had to endure manifest horrors in various concentration camps or in other frightening conditions. Reading something like that is one thing, though, while actually watching an actual survivor recount her (or his) own experiences is something else entirely, and something I personally feel can be a cathartic experience for anyone trying to come to terms with the very darkest elements of human behavior. There is of course undeniable sadness surging through all four of these accounts, but there's also a steely resilience and even hints of joy. Recommended.