by Allan Fish
(Poland 1947 110m) not on DVD
Aka. Ostatni Etap
The life of No 14111
p Wanda Jakubowska d Wanda Jakubowska w Gerda Schneider, Wanda Jakubowska ph Bentsion Monatsyrsky ed Wanda Jakubowska m Roman Palester art Csezlaw Pieskowski, Roman Mann
Tatjana Gorecka (Eugenia), Antonina Gorecka (Anna), Barbara Drapinska (Marta Weiss), Huguette Faget (Michele), Wanda Bartowna (Helena), Maria Winogradowa (Nadia), Barbara Fijiewska (Anielka), Anna Redlikowna (Urszula), Alina Janowska (Dessa), Zofia Mrzowska (Cyganka), Aleksandr Slaska, Barbara Rachwalska, Wladislaw Brochwicz,
Wanda Jakubowska’s film makes a point of stating, in its opening caption, that what follows, though based on authentic events, is “a fraction of the truth about the concentration camp at Auschwitz. We remind you that at Auschwitz four and a half million people from various countries were exterminated under the Nazi occupation.” One might hear oneself responding “as if we could ever forget“, were it not for the fact that such a response reeks of flippancy. This is not a flippant film in any way, shape or form. It’s literally deadly serious. People used to having the horrors detailed in the likes of Schindler’s List may think the sequences lack the power of Spielberg’s later film, or indeed some of the sequences in Andrzej Munk’s later unfinished kindred spirit film, Passenger. Yet it’s this very matter-of-factness that makes Jakubowska’s film so utterly chilling. Besides, she and co-writer Schneider were actual survivors of Auschwitz, so I think we can safely say they knew better than us how to accurately portray the horrors that occurred within those theatres of death.
Marta Weiss arrives at Auschwitz with her family and it is noticed that she can speak fluent German. She is thus separated from her family and employed as a camp interpreter, only realising later on that the rest of her family were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. At around the same time, another Polish prisoner, Eugenia, gives birth to a boy, only for it to be taken for extermination by the medical orderly to prevent it growing up into an ‘undesirable’. The only hope the inmates have is of snippets of news about the advances of the Allied troops on both fronts.
In truth the final act may be a little melodramatic, and somewhat fanciful, but it certainly doesn’t betray the characters or the spirit in which the film was made. The film was actually shot at the real camp – as if anyone could mistake that infamous watch tower and the solitary rail track running under it – something which would be rather unthinkable today, but which added authenticity to proceedings, and showed the courage of its makers – and many of its actors – in going back to the scene of their own darkest hours. The Last Stage – the title referring to the last journey to the gas chambers – is not comfortable viewing, indeed it provokes the expected abhorrence from any given viewer, but whole images just hit you with the force of a Howitzer. As I write I recall the shot of the train pulling into Auschwitz with its cargo of soon to be deceased, the black-hearted overseer who advises the women not to complain or they’ll all “go through the chimney“, the orchestra playing Lehar as victims go to their death, Marta’s asking about the presence of a nearby ‘factory’, only to be informed it’s the crematorium and realise that her family are dead, the chilling way a medical orderly signs a baby’s death certificate with the cause of death before fatally injecting him, the officer dancing to Strauss waltzes and thanking the Fuhrer for their great life, or the discussions about how to improve efficiency in extermination, as if they were merely ordering the culling of cattle in a Foot and Mouth epidemic. The most searing image, however, remains that of the little girl passing her ball to a German officer, who smiles as she and other children walk unknowingly to their death, before dissolving into shots of burning flames and a slow pan of endless stolen belongings from the trains’ doomed cargo. It’s a truly miserable experience, but one any serious film student, or indeed human being, should seek out, so that Marta’s final words “we must not let Auschwitz revive” stay with us always.
This film has some powerful moments, as Allan has related here in his excellent review. It’s certainly an essential Holocuast film, and one that many are unfamiliar with.
………I think it’s more than significant that the director and screenwriter were survivors of the camps. Really lends this some authenticity; one to seek out……….