Kapo is a word for Nazi concentration camp inmates who were deputized to keep an eye on their fellow prisoners and report back to the officers. In exchange, they received special treatment and favors.
In this 1960 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Susan Strasberg gives a fierce performance as a Kapo in one such camp. We watch her evolve from terrified young girl into ruthless authority figure out of a desperate sense of survival. We then see her undergo a crisis of conscience as the inmates plan an escape. Does she help them or report them?
In the story of this one young woman is a broader examination of what drove millions of Germans to either support the Nazis or turn a blind eye to their atrocities. It's a cautionary tale about how far the extinct for survival will push one human being to disregard the life of another. Gillo Pontecorvo, who would direct one of the best films of the 1960s a few years later ("The Battle of Algiers"), allows a bit more sentiment and melodrama to drive this story than he does that later picture, but it's still a bracing and haunting film.
For the record, this is the first time I saw Emanuelle Riva as a much younger actress (or at least the first time when I knew who she was), and she's stunning.
Grade: A
In this 1960 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Susan Strasberg gives a fierce performance as a Kapo in one such camp. We watch her evolve from terrified young girl into ruthless authority figure out of a desperate sense of survival. We then see her undergo a crisis of conscience as the inmates plan an escape. Does she help them or report them?
In the story of this one young woman is a broader examination of what drove millions of Germans to either support the Nazis or turn a blind eye to their atrocities. It's a cautionary tale about how far the extinct for survival will push one human being to disregard the life of another. Gillo Pontecorvo, who would direct one of the best films of the 1960s a few years later ("The Battle of Algiers"), allows a bit more sentiment and melodrama to drive this story than he does that later picture, but it's still a bracing and haunting film.
For the record, this is the first time I saw Emanuelle Riva as a much younger actress (or at least the first time when I knew who she was), and she's stunning.
Grade: A