SOURCE: Romney, Jonathan. “The Poetry of Horror.” New Statesman and Society 7, no. 4172 (18 February 1994): 33.

In the following review, Romney commends certain aspects of Schindler's List but asserts that the film is caught between its aspirations to realistically portray the horror of the Holocaust and its “love of elegance.”

There is a lot that you have to get through before you can even begin to see Schindler's List. First there is the sheer disbelief at the thought that Steven Spielberg, of all directors, has taken on the Holocaust. Then comes the scepticism on reading the Oscar-fuelling adulatory reviews that greeted the film in the US. Once again, before even the first frame of a Spielberg film, you have to contend with its status as phenomenon—it's just that, this time, the stakes are immeasurably higher.

So let me just say that, on many levels, Schindler's List gives ample cause to...