So, after
The Sorrow and the Pity, which I described as "one of the great WWII holocaust documentaries of all time," let's move on to pretty much the definitive, greatest holocaust documentary of all time, period:
Shoah. And I don't call it that because of its length, although clocking in at over 9 and a half hours, I'd say it's running time gives it a hefty advantage in being thorough. But even just in terms of its power, on being a compelling and fascinating collection of individual interviews and personal accounts,
Shoah is just never going to be topped no matter how many more holocaust documentaries they make.
Update 8/5/15 - 8/16/24: When I initially wrote this, I didn't bother with the Criterion DVD. I just jumped from the old DVD to the new BD. But it's Update Week, so I'm going back and adding Criterion's DVD, too.
Update 11/7/26: There's a new
Shoah in town... sort of. People have been clamoring for a reissue since Criterion's 2013 BD went out of print, and this year we got one. And they went and turned it from a 3-disc set to a 4-disc set. Great for newcomers, but if you've got the last one, is it worth the double-dip?
If you haven't seen it yet,
Shoah may not be what you expect. It isn't an academic account with a narrator telling you what happened when over crunchy, black and white shots of Hitler shouting speeches and animated maps. This is documentary as deeply personal art, not a history lesson. This is
Claude Lanzmann wandering the entire globe interviewing everybody with a personal attachment to the holocaust and not letting go until he gets to the profound heart of the matter every single time. He shares some colorful personality traits with
Marcus Ophüls, sometimes giving an air of subversive almost naughtiness in where he goes with his camera. He's of course appropriately respectful and reverent to the survivors and the tragedy, but he also pushes some people pretty far: like Polish citizens who possibly found the silver linings in their Jewish neighbors' disappearances, or brazenly walking into a former Nazi's workplace, cameras rolling (remember, this was long before
Michael Moore developed his brand of filmmaking). And yet it's never brash spectacle, this is no trashy
Vice documentary. When he secretly records a former death camp guard, at first there might be an air of giddy "look what we're up to" energy, but then as he talks more and more, revealing details not preserved in any other historical documents, it becomes an existentially challenging conversation, not to mention a very important historical record.
Now, this has been released all around the world, I used to have a Korean 4-disc set which I unfortunately sold off before I started doing comparisons here. But I do have the original 2003 US 4-disc DVD set from New Yorker Video, and of course the 2013 Criterion blu-ray, which gives the film a new 2k scan. Plus their concurrent DVD edition. And now I've got their latest, 2026 reissue, which utilizes the previous 2k restoration, but may not be 100% identical...
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1) 2003 New Yorker DVD; 2) 2013 Criterion DVD;
3) 2013 Criterion BD; 4) 2026 Criterion BD. |
The original DVDs are framed a bit oddly, slightly taller than 1.33 at 1.29:1. They don't seem to actually have any additional vertical information, however. Instead, to seem to have lost some picture on the sides (chiefly the right), which is restored in Criterion's new 1.37:1 scan. At least for their blu-ray. Curiously, their DVD is slightly window-boxed to 1.35:1. No idea why the difference, but neither one reveals any additional picture; the DVD is just squeezed a little bit. Still, either is a nice improvement over the New Yorker. Otherwise, their DVD was alright for its time, but the film definitely benefit from the HD treatment. Thanks to the 2k, there is a bit more detail in there as well, but we really seem to have hit the limits of how much can be pulled from the original negatives, especially as this was a 16mm film. So it's going to be grainy, but the grain is very natural here. Dirt and scratches have been cleaned up, too. My only criticism is that the color-timing seems to lean a bit too heavily on the green end; but it's a big improvement on everything that's come before it.
And yes, the 2026 BD is using the same remaster as the 2013, but it's clearly a different encode. Comparing the file sizes on disc 1 (the first four hours and thirty-five minutes of the movie), the file size actually shrinks from 44.2GB to 39.4GB. With that said, though, I think I actually prefer the new encode. It can be a bit maddening zooming in and comparing grain structure, when every frame can be better on one disc or the other. But just from spot-checking a handful of random frames (including the ones in the comparison above) the new encode seems to capture grains a little more thoroughly and have less "blotchy" spots. Certainly not a reason to replace one edition for another, but if you're double dipping for the new fourth disc, it's nice that you might be getting a slight, if practically microscopic, upgrade in PQ, too.
And, of course, being a documentary with different types of archival footage, quality will vary in different scenes. The above shot, for example, was taken from a small, hidden camera which was broadcasting (like live TV, not taping) to a van parked across the street. And that footage was shot with a film camera pointed at the little monitor in the van as it was happening live. So naturally those scenes look much worse. But like all elements of the film, they look as good as they ever have or could here on this blu-ray.
Both of Criterion's blu-rays' multi-lingual audio is uncompressed, presented in its original mono form, with both regular English subtitles and English closed captioning. The DVDs, of course, are lossy. And the New Yorker disc just has the one set of English subtitles, as well as French ones.
Now unsurprisingly, the New Yorker discs didn't have any special features with it. But very impressively, Criterion has provided a good deal of supplemental material. There are two interviews with Lanzmann himself, which combined add up to about 75 minutes, so like the film itself, they get fairly thorough. Then there's another 30+ minute feature where they interview camera operator
Caroline Champetier. Basically, you're going to have questions after viewing this film, and these do a good job answering them. And they've got the trailer, which actually you'd think New Yorker could've come up with.
But even more importantly, Criterion's 3-BD set also includes three additional Lanzmann films:
A Visitor from the Living from 1999,
Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. from 2001 and 2010's
The Karski Report. They're not even little, short films. The shortest is 49 minutes, and the longest is a full-length feature clocking in at over 100. All three are essentially addendums to
Shoah, although they do stand on their own. Some new film was shot for these, but they're primarily made up of interview footage shot for
Shoah that wasn't included in that film.
A Visitor From the Living, for example, is centered around an interview with
Maurice Rossel, a red cross leader who controversially visited a Nazi death camp and claims to have found nothing breaking the Geneva conventions. It's a whole, powerful story onto itself that was too much of a divergence to just include as a tangent in
Shoah.
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| Lanzmann wearing a wire in All I Had Was Nothingness |
The new 2026 edition keeps all of those first three discs' content
exactly the same, except they add a new trailer for the film's 2025
theatrical re-release. But then they add a fourth disc, with an all new
feature0-length doc called
All I Had Was Nothingness. This is a pretty fascinating look back at the making of
Shoah,
comprised entirely of unseen outtakes and narrated by an actor reading
from Lanzmann's memoirs. We're given a fascinating look back at
everything he went through to make this film, including a time he was
caught filming a former Nazi officer surreptitiously and had to flee the
police. Most of it hits on a more personal level, though, taking us
deeper into the witnesses' lives and the effect their stories had on
Lanzmann and his crew. It's kind of a stand-alone film, certainly more than a mere "extra," but if you just watched this, it would just make you feel the need to see
Shoah right away. It is also in HD on a dual-layer blu-ray disc, presented in 1.33:1 with a 5.1 DTS-HD mix and removable English subtitles. Also included is the
All I Had trailer.
So
Shoah is an amazing film, which too many people probably skip
because of its length, but that's their loss. And past DVDs have been
okay, but Criterion eventually gave it first class treatment it
always deserved. There's basically no excuse
not to have this on your shelf. As for whether it's worth double-dipping, well, the new doc is pretty great, but the price tag is also quite steep... especially since they missed the opportunity to redo this in 4k and issue a proper UHD. So if you're not rich, maybe just find a way to watch it online or something. But it really does make the 2026 edition stronger.
