Only the survivors of the Holocaust can tell us what the concentration camp experience was really like, but Kapo is probably as close as cinema can get to recreating the numbing horrors of the camps--and that includes Schindler's List. Susan Strasberg is superb as Edith, the Jewish teenager who is saved by chance and then becomes a collaborator in order to survive. The film's greatest strength is its ability to make us comprehend the forces that compelled inmates to become kapos--the Nazi equivalent of prison trustees--and almost (but not quite) makes us sympathize with them. Snatched from the jaws of the gas chamber only to have the power of life and death thrust upon them, the kapos did what they had to do in order to survive--and who amongst us would not take that same chance if thrust into the heart of Nazi darkness. This incredibly powerful film is filled with astonishing imagery, none more powerful than the scene of Edith/Nicole watching helplessly as her parents are forced to jog to their demise amidst a crowd of children and elderly inmates--people who are inessential to the Reich's war machine. This important film, long forgotten in the United States, has now been unearthed by Turner Classic Movies, and hopefully a DVD is not far behind.
31 Reviews
A realistic picture of life in a concentration camp
howard.schumann27 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1960, Gillo Pontecorvo's second film Kapo features Susan Strasberg as a Holocaust victim who decides that she will do anything to survive, even join the enemy. Kapo, which stands for Kameradenpolizei, refers to death camp collaborators who are recruited from the "criminal element" to supervise other prisoners in return for better treatment and more privileges. Pontecorvo, who fought in the Italian Resistance as a member of the Communist Party, presents a realistic picture of what life in a concentration camp must have been like but no movie can fully capture the madness and inevitably any attempt to dramatize it must take on aspects of melodrama.
Strasberg, who had played the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway several years earlier, portrays Edith, a 14-year old Jewish girl who is sent to a concentration camp with her parents when Jews are rounded up in Paris. After watching her parents die in the gas chambers along with other women and children, Sofia, a friend, introduces Edith to the camp doctor who provides her with a new identity as the non-Jewish Nicole. Cutting her hair and dressing her in the work clothes of a prisoner that died that morning, she is sent to a labor camp where she witnesses repeated horrors including the hanging of a young girl for alleged sabotage.
Desperate to stay alive, she offers herself to a German soldier Karl (Gianni Garko). Although little about this relationship is developed, it leads to Nicole accepting the job of a Kapo, and the victim becoming a victimizer, brutally enforcing the camp's harsh rules on her fellow prisoners. It is only when she witnesses the suicide of a close friend Terese (Emanuelle Riva) and falls in love with Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), a Russian prisoner of war, that she is able to redeem the human values that had once been an integral part of her life. Much of this happens over a period of time but the passage of time is not shown and Nicole's transformation from a loving young girl to a bullying camp guard seems too quick and facile to be truly convincing, and there is little self-reflection in the process. The experience gained in this film, however, paved the way for Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, only a few years after.
Strasberg, who had played the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway several years earlier, portrays Edith, a 14-year old Jewish girl who is sent to a concentration camp with her parents when Jews are rounded up in Paris. After watching her parents die in the gas chambers along with other women and children, Sofia, a friend, introduces Edith to the camp doctor who provides her with a new identity as the non-Jewish Nicole. Cutting her hair and dressing her in the work clothes of a prisoner that died that morning, she is sent to a labor camp where she witnesses repeated horrors including the hanging of a young girl for alleged sabotage.
Desperate to stay alive, she offers herself to a German soldier Karl (Gianni Garko). Although little about this relationship is developed, it leads to Nicole accepting the job of a Kapo, and the victim becoming a victimizer, brutally enforcing the camp's harsh rules on her fellow prisoners. It is only when she witnesses the suicide of a close friend Terese (Emanuelle Riva) and falls in love with Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), a Russian prisoner of war, that she is able to redeem the human values that had once been an integral part of her life. Much of this happens over a period of time but the passage of time is not shown and Nicole's transformation from a loving young girl to a bullying camp guard seems too quick and facile to be truly convincing, and there is little self-reflection in the process. The experience gained in this film, however, paved the way for Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, only a few years after.
Excellent Character Study of Lost Innocence
DumaNV4 February 2005
Quite an excellent character study of what people will do to survive. Although not as powerful as other prisoner of war films such as "Seven Beauties" it stands out because of the performances of all the women and especially Susan Strasberg who does a magnificent job starting out as the young innocent girl, hiding the fact that she is Jewish, a bewildering task, and her agonizing evolution into a hardened guard.
Don't look for huge sets and gruesome scenes of gas chambers and ovens here. It's not that type of film. It's a simple story of the slow chipping away of humanity that dire conditions force. Dignity and nobility give way to cruelty and inhumanity and simple survival becomes a thing to justify as time goes on. By telling this type of story through the eyes of a young impressionable person is excellent.
Don't look for huge sets and gruesome scenes of gas chambers and ovens here. It's not that type of film. It's a simple story of the slow chipping away of humanity that dire conditions force. Dignity and nobility give way to cruelty and inhumanity and simple survival becomes a thing to justify as time goes on. By telling this type of story through the eyes of a young impressionable person is excellent.
Jarringly realistic, for 1959
Ripshin8 January 2005
This Italian film, following the travails of a young Jewish girl in a Nazi work camp, is successful due mainly to its realistic sets, and the performances of Strasberg and Terzieff. Supporting cast members also shine throughout the film. The whole concept of the "kapo" is new to me, and it added a further dimension to the horrific Nazi experience not covered in films such as "Sophie's Choice" and "The Pianist." Deservedly, it was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film) in 1960. Strangely enough, most filmographies of Strasberg fail to highlight her incredible performance in this film. Certainly, it must have reflected her performance as Anne Frank on Broadway. The same year as "Kapo," George Stevens released his film version of "Anne Frank," starring Millie Perkins, who took the role once Audrey Hepburn turned it down. Certainly, Strasberg must have been considered.
A "kapo" was a prisoner of a concentration camp that watched over the other prisoners in a specified group. A kapo received better clothing, food, and was not required to work. 2001's "The Grey Zone" would be an appropriate double-feature with this film.
A "kapo" was a prisoner of a concentration camp that watched over the other prisoners in a specified group. A kapo received better clothing, food, and was not required to work. 2001's "The Grey Zone" would be an appropriate double-feature with this film.
Incredible Story
taibunsuu-114 May 2005
I've never really liked holocaust flicks because they get well, usually made so that the dumbest of the dumb to 'get it.' Kapo is just a movie that shows, not tells, which of course makes the best story. Thanks to TCM for playing this gem that I'll buy on DVD as soon as it comes out. I'd never even heard of it, and I have seen a LOT of flicks.
Susan Strasburg does an incredible job as Nicollete / Edith. Her transformation from shell-shocked victim to cynical survivor is absolutely gripping. The tension in the movie builds to nearly unbearable level and the end simply leaves you scooping your jaw off the floor.
This is the type of movie I sorely needed after going on a loooong dry spell of celluloid garbage. Why this movie isn't famous, I have no idea, but it should be.
Susan Strasburg does an incredible job as Nicollete / Edith. Her transformation from shell-shocked victim to cynical survivor is absolutely gripping. The tension in the movie builds to nearly unbearable level and the end simply leaves you scooping your jaw off the floor.
This is the type of movie I sorely needed after going on a loooong dry spell of celluloid garbage. Why this movie isn't famous, I have no idea, but it should be.
The Will To Survive
Eumenides_04 November 2009
Warning: Spoilers
My journey with Gillo Pontecorvo started with The Battle of Algiers and continued with Queimada. Now I finally have the pleasure of going back to the movie that first cemented his position as one of the best directors ever, Kapo. Once again he's assisted by the great European screenwriter Franco Solinas, a man who has given so much to world cinema and yet remains forgotten.
Kapo is not a movie about revolutions; it's perhaps Pontecorvo's most traditional and intimate movie since it doesn't concern the sweeping history of a country or conflicts between cultures. It simply follows Edith, a Jewish girl returning home after a piano lesson. She arrives just in time to be taken, with her family, by the SS. Through luck, a doctor creates a new, non-Jewish, identity, for her. Her family is sent to Auschwitz, but she goes to a labour camp, where she may survive.
What follows is a slow transformation from a shy, innocent girl into a ruthless woman who'll do anything to survive. Her chance comes when she becomes a Kapo, or one of the inmates in charge of the other inmates. She's well fed, well clothed, she has some respect from the German soldiers and inspires terror in the other women. Susan Strasberg becomes the character, always captivating even when she's ruthless. She reminds me of Giancarlo Giannini in that other masterpiece about concentration camp prisoners, Pasqualino Settebellezze.
This is a very bleak Holocaust movie because it paints a picture of the inmates that may leave some people uncomfortable. This is not Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful or The Pianist, all hard movies, but in which we see the people helping each other in a good spirit of comradeship. The reality of Kapo resembles more that of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, or Tadeusz Borowski's We Were in Auschwitz, objective, emotionless memoirs about what people would do to survive every day in a concentration camp, of how low they'd go in their degradation, of how their will to survive made them forget morality and decency.
Although a bit dated, Kapo remains a great study of the worst side of human nature. The camp may seem a bit unrealistic nowadays as well as a love story that develops within its electric fences, but back then the concentration world wasn't as well studied as it is today. What remains is really a powerful story directed with craft and compassion.
Kapo is not a movie about revolutions; it's perhaps Pontecorvo's most traditional and intimate movie since it doesn't concern the sweeping history of a country or conflicts between cultures. It simply follows Edith, a Jewish girl returning home after a piano lesson. She arrives just in time to be taken, with her family, by the SS. Through luck, a doctor creates a new, non-Jewish, identity, for her. Her family is sent to Auschwitz, but she goes to a labour camp, where she may survive.
What follows is a slow transformation from a shy, innocent girl into a ruthless woman who'll do anything to survive. Her chance comes when she becomes a Kapo, or one of the inmates in charge of the other inmates. She's well fed, well clothed, she has some respect from the German soldiers and inspires terror in the other women. Susan Strasberg becomes the character, always captivating even when she's ruthless. She reminds me of Giancarlo Giannini in that other masterpiece about concentration camp prisoners, Pasqualino Settebellezze.
This is a very bleak Holocaust movie because it paints a picture of the inmates that may leave some people uncomfortable. This is not Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful or The Pianist, all hard movies, but in which we see the people helping each other in a good spirit of comradeship. The reality of Kapo resembles more that of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, or Tadeusz Borowski's We Were in Auschwitz, objective, emotionless memoirs about what people would do to survive every day in a concentration camp, of how low they'd go in their degradation, of how their will to survive made them forget morality and decency.
Although a bit dated, Kapo remains a great study of the worst side of human nature. The camp may seem a bit unrealistic nowadays as well as a love story that develops within its electric fences, but back then the concentration world wasn't as well studied as it is today. What remains is really a powerful story directed with craft and compassion.
Outstanding film about concentration camps with top-notch acting and realist setting
ma-cortes26 February 2010
A teen Jewish girl and her family are imprisoned in a concentration camp . There, the 14-years-old girl played by Susan Strasberg finds a harsh reality and changes identities with the help of the camp medic and rises to the position of Kapo. This is a good movie about the brutal existence at concentration camps and subsequent breakout from horrible place. This excellent movie deals about extermination center, abuse of camp guards or Kapos who enjoy their power, prisoners committing suicide and the subsequent getaway led by Laurent Terzieff and Russian prisoners . We see the horrors,murders,massacres against the prisoners and Nazis personify evil . Thus , when the incoming transports ,mostly Jews, SS soldiers made instant decisions,those who were fit to labors were sent into the camp, others including the children ,were dispatched immediately to the gas chambers.Finally the inmates broke out in a desperate riot that I believe it can be the concentration camp of Sorbibor, only in which Russian prisoners achieved to escape . The picture reflects perfectly the atrocities as a by-product of sheer Nazi evil . The flick is powered by splendid performances , as Susan Strasberg, -daughter of Lee Strasberg, creator of Actors studio- as suffering starring and Laurent Terzieff is watchable as obstinate Russian soldier wishing freedom. Appears as secondary actor playing a Nazi soldier Gianni Garco or John Garco, future Spaghetti Western hero named Sartana . Shot in magnificent black and white by Sekulovic and Carlo De Palma , Woody Allen's usual cameraman . Sensitive and atmospheric score by Carlo Rustichelli. The film achieved an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign movie but lost to the ¨Virgin Spring ¨. This extraordinary and unknown film by one of the pioneers of political film , he always interesting director Gillo Pontecorvo. It was one of the first films about the theme of Jewish holocaust and one of the more realistic in its recreation . Gillo subsequently will directed ¨Battle of Argel¨ and ¨Queimada¨.
The picture is based on real events and survivor's memories,these are the following : The large death camps were transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference (1942). There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates (as happen with the starring's family) . Victims (as Susan Strasberg and her parents) were brought to the camp in unventilated transports, and all but a handful were gassed after arrival,the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time using Zyclon B which was a crystallized prussic acid which dropped into death chamber ,most of their corpses were burned in open pits (as occurs at the ending of the movie when is opened a large hole to bury unfortunates).
The picture is based on real events and survivor's memories,these are the following : The large death camps were transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference (1942). There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates (as happen with the starring's family) . Victims (as Susan Strasberg and her parents) were brought to the camp in unventilated transports, and all but a handful were gassed after arrival,the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time using Zyclon B which was a crystallized prussic acid which dropped into death chamber ,most of their corpses were burned in open pits (as occurs at the ending of the movie when is opened a large hole to bury unfortunates).
A Powerful Tale Of Survival
atlasmb15 January 2020
Edith is a Jewish teen whose family is among those loaded onto boxcars and shipped to Auschwitz. This is a story of brutality and Susan Strasberg ("Picnic") plays the central character who struggles to survive the Nazi holocaust machine.
Shot in black and white, of course, the film provides a stark and nearly unrelenting look at the depravity, deprivations, and degradations found in concentration camps. Strasberg is strong in her role, embodying the chameleon-like ability to change that gives her character a chance to survive, though survival has its price.
The action feels real, the locations feel real, and real emotions are evoked by this ambitious attempt to delve into the real human costs of barbarism---the loss of principles, the corruption of dignity, and the subtle shadings of resistance.
The Italian producers of this film pursued Strasberg for this role, somehow knowing that she had the depth within her to bring Edith to life on the screen. Her father, Lee, recommended she accept the role. Luckily, she did.
Shot in black and white, of course, the film provides a stark and nearly unrelenting look at the depravity, deprivations, and degradations found in concentration camps. Strasberg is strong in her role, embodying the chameleon-like ability to change that gives her character a chance to survive, though survival has its price.
The action feels real, the locations feel real, and real emotions are evoked by this ambitious attempt to delve into the real human costs of barbarism---the loss of principles, the corruption of dignity, and the subtle shadings of resistance.
The Italian producers of this film pursued Strasberg for this role, somehow knowing that she had the depth within her to bring Edith to life on the screen. Her father, Lee, recommended she accept the role. Luckily, she did.
Brutal...
JasparLamarCrabb22 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Susan Strasberg stars as a young Jewish girl sent to Auschwitz, where she witnesses her parents being dragged to the gas chamber. Disguised as a Gentile, she is moved to a work camp where her fight for survival leads her to become a prison guard. Gillo Pontecorvo's film is so audacious, it's believable. Filmed in what looks like bleached out black & white, there are scenes of horror so realistic, they look like newsreel footage. The movie is about the madness of war, what it means to collaborate and the lengths to which a person will go in order to survive. Pontecorvo coaxes an amazing performance out of Strasberg and the great Emmanuelle Riva appears as a fellow inmate. Carlo Rustichelli's music score adds a lot. A brutal, unforgiving film with a decidedly ambiguous ending.
Camp police (kapòs) were chosen from among the criminal group
kijii18 November 2016
This film relates the story of a 14-year-old Jewish girl during her captivity in a Nazi concentration camp. Her role is portrayed by 21 year old Susan Strasberg who had portrayed Anne Frank on stage and Kim Novak's little sister, Millie Owens, in Picnic (1955). Kapò was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1960, when the Oscar went to Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring.
In 1966, another Gillo Pontecorvo film---The Battle of Algiers--would be nominated in that same category. That year the Oscar went to A Man and a Woman. (I think that the Academy 'missed the boat THAT year!! The idea that The Battle of Algiers could be missed for its greatness is hard to imagine!)
As Kapò begins, Edith (Susan Strasberg), has just finished her harpsichord lesson and is going home when she sees her parents being arrested by the Nazis. When she runs to them, she too, is arrested. The family is transported in a boxcar to a concentration camp in Poland. Once there, the she is separated from her parents and taken to a separate cell block. Anxious to find them, she enters their cell block where we see the film's first terrible images of the over crowed and starving prisoners. While she is unable to find her parents, another female prisoner, Sofia (Didi Perego), sees her there and takes her to a camp doctor for help. Since Edith is new to the camp--and another girl her age had just died the night before--the doctor instructs her how to change her identity and be saved from certain death. As he explains, the prisoners are treated differently based on which patch they have on their smocks: a yellow Star of David indicates that they are Jews; a red patch (such as the doctor's) identifies them as political prisoners; and a black triangle indicates that they are criminals. The doctor tells Edith that she must cut her hair, change her clothes with those of the dead girl and take on a new identity, as Nicole Niepas, a non-Jewish criminal (with a black triangle on her smock).
Camp police (kapòs) are chosen from among the criminal group. They are hated by their fellow prisoners but useful to the SS officers who use them as their eyes and ears within the cell blocks. By being harsh on the other prisoners and reporting any resistance or planned insubordination to their Germans captures, the kapos are given special privileges such as food, clothing, and use of sanitary facilities. But, most importantly, if they do their jobs well, they are not likely to be exterminated with the other prisoners.
Later, Edith sees her parents being marched off to be killed in the gas chamber. With all hope lost, Edith (as Nicole Niepas) becomes a kapo. Her transformation from victim to 'victimizer' increases as she reports the activities of other prisoners and fraternizes with a German soldier in the camp. (She loses her virginity to one of the soldiers in the camp.) Her personal harshness is diminished when Russian POWs are taken to the same concentration camp and she falls in love with the Russian soldier, Sascha (Laurent Terzieff). As the Allies approach the camp near the end of the war in Europe, she agrees to take part in a daring escape plan. But, the as the plan takes shape, we realize that it is not totally without sacrifice..
In 1966, another Gillo Pontecorvo film---The Battle of Algiers--would be nominated in that same category. That year the Oscar went to A Man and a Woman. (I think that the Academy 'missed the boat THAT year!! The idea that The Battle of Algiers could be missed for its greatness is hard to imagine!)
As Kapò begins, Edith (Susan Strasberg), has just finished her harpsichord lesson and is going home when she sees her parents being arrested by the Nazis. When she runs to them, she too, is arrested. The family is transported in a boxcar to a concentration camp in Poland. Once there, the she is separated from her parents and taken to a separate cell block. Anxious to find them, she enters their cell block where we see the film's first terrible images of the over crowed and starving prisoners. While she is unable to find her parents, another female prisoner, Sofia (Didi Perego), sees her there and takes her to a camp doctor for help. Since Edith is new to the camp--and another girl her age had just died the night before--the doctor instructs her how to change her identity and be saved from certain death. As he explains, the prisoners are treated differently based on which patch they have on their smocks: a yellow Star of David indicates that they are Jews; a red patch (such as the doctor's) identifies them as political prisoners; and a black triangle indicates that they are criminals. The doctor tells Edith that she must cut her hair, change her clothes with those of the dead girl and take on a new identity, as Nicole Niepas, a non-Jewish criminal (with a black triangle on her smock).
Camp police (kapòs) are chosen from among the criminal group. They are hated by their fellow prisoners but useful to the SS officers who use them as their eyes and ears within the cell blocks. By being harsh on the other prisoners and reporting any resistance or planned insubordination to their Germans captures, the kapos are given special privileges such as food, clothing, and use of sanitary facilities. But, most importantly, if they do their jobs well, they are not likely to be exterminated with the other prisoners.
Later, Edith sees her parents being marched off to be killed in the gas chamber. With all hope lost, Edith (as Nicole Niepas) becomes a kapo. Her transformation from victim to 'victimizer' increases as she reports the activities of other prisoners and fraternizes with a German soldier in the camp. (She loses her virginity to one of the soldiers in the camp.) Her personal harshness is diminished when Russian POWs are taken to the same concentration camp and she falls in love with the Russian soldier, Sascha (Laurent Terzieff). As the Allies approach the camp near the end of the war in Europe, she agrees to take part in a daring escape plan. But, the as the plan takes shape, we realize that it is not totally without sacrifice..
KAPO' (Gillo Pontecorvo & Giuliano Montaldo, 1960) ***
Bunuel197625 February 2014
As with my recent viewing of Bernhard Wicki's THE BRIDGE (1959), I was introduced to the film under review via a still from it adorning the large and lavishly-illustrated "War Movies" tome I used to pore over as a kid; actually, apart from a recent Italian TV screening, I only recall a solitary broadcast of it back then one Friday night – this was also true of Pontecorvo's best-known work, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1965), which I did catch much later on TV and subsequently on the big-screen in London – but, given the adult subject matter, I passed on it. Having now finally caught up with the movie (another title to make the "Wonders In The Dark" all-time top 3.000 list) after all these years, as part of my ongoing Oscar marathon, I must say that it is one of the most miserable viewing experiences I have ever had!
The fall of the Third Reich in mid-1945 brought an unsuspecting world face to face with the shocking truth of Nazi concentration camps; this led to the infamous Nuremberg trials of 1947 and, perhaps inevitably, cinematic depictions of this horrific genocide. The most celebrated of these are Alain Resnais's harrowing short NIGHT AND FOG (1955; detailing the findings at the Auschwitz camp) and Steven Spielberg's Oscar-laden SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993; dealing with a real-life German industrialist who hid thousands of persecuted Jews among his factory employees). KAPO' – being the name given by the captors to the favoured one within each barracks whom they have selected to be its warden – might well be the very first feature-length movie on this theme; while clearly evoking the "Neorealist" school in its unremitting bleakness and dispassionate viewpoint, what is most surprising – in hindsight – is that, in many ways, this also anticipates the reprehensible "Women In Prison" and Nazisploitation subgenres in Euro-Cult fare of the late 1960s and 1970s!
In a somewhat sensationalistic touch, the protagonist who becomes the titular Nazi lackey is a Jew passed off by the camp medic as a French girl after having witnessed her parents' oblivious march towards the gas chamber. She is played by American Susan Strasberg: though we are asked to believe that she is a virginal 14 year-old who soon becomes the young officers' favourite 'lay' (among them Gianni Garko), the actress is effective in delineating the character's trajectory from doe-eyed innocent to callous parasite (even if it seems this is primarily done in order to appease her personal hunger) to hopeless romantic (she becomes enamoured of rebellious Russian POW Laurent Terzieff) to resigned martyr (the heroine's elite position in the camp makes her the ideal, albeit endangered, candidate to switch off the electrically-charged barbed-wire fence that would precipitate a mass escape attempt). Interestingly enough, Strasberg had just been passed over in recreating her Broadway role for George Stevens' screen rendition of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959).
As expected, the supporting female cast is carefully chosen so as to encompass a wide variety of types among both victims and collaborationists: most notable, however, are Emmanuelle Riva (as the one who initially takes Strasberg under her wing but is then shunned by the new Kapo' and ends up committing suicide via electrocution) and Didi Perego (a Silver Ribbon award winner for Best Supporting Actress as the statuesque leader of the inmates whose outspokenness eventually leads to her being gunned down in cold blood). Pontecorvo (whom I saw at the 2004 Venice Film Festival during a screening of the Michelangelo Antonioni/Wong Kar-Wai/Steven Soderbergh-directed anthology EROS and has since passed away) did not have a prolific career, but his place in the annals of World Cinema is assured on the strength of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS alone; incidentally, he is also credited with collaborating on Carlo Rustichelli's brooding score. As for co-director Montaldo (whose contribution, whatever it entailed, has never been given its due), he was invited over here a couple of years ago to introduce a number of his films screened as part of some Italian festival – but these were oddly scheduled during the mornings, thus making it impossible for me to attend!
The fall of the Third Reich in mid-1945 brought an unsuspecting world face to face with the shocking truth of Nazi concentration camps; this led to the infamous Nuremberg trials of 1947 and, perhaps inevitably, cinematic depictions of this horrific genocide. The most celebrated of these are Alain Resnais's harrowing short NIGHT AND FOG (1955; detailing the findings at the Auschwitz camp) and Steven Spielberg's Oscar-laden SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993; dealing with a real-life German industrialist who hid thousands of persecuted Jews among his factory employees). KAPO' – being the name given by the captors to the favoured one within each barracks whom they have selected to be its warden – might well be the very first feature-length movie on this theme; while clearly evoking the "Neorealist" school in its unremitting bleakness and dispassionate viewpoint, what is most surprising – in hindsight – is that, in many ways, this also anticipates the reprehensible "Women In Prison" and Nazisploitation subgenres in Euro-Cult fare of the late 1960s and 1970s!
In a somewhat sensationalistic touch, the protagonist who becomes the titular Nazi lackey is a Jew passed off by the camp medic as a French girl after having witnessed her parents' oblivious march towards the gas chamber. She is played by American Susan Strasberg: though we are asked to believe that she is a virginal 14 year-old who soon becomes the young officers' favourite 'lay' (among them Gianni Garko), the actress is effective in delineating the character's trajectory from doe-eyed innocent to callous parasite (even if it seems this is primarily done in order to appease her personal hunger) to hopeless romantic (she becomes enamoured of rebellious Russian POW Laurent Terzieff) to resigned martyr (the heroine's elite position in the camp makes her the ideal, albeit endangered, candidate to switch off the electrically-charged barbed-wire fence that would precipitate a mass escape attempt). Interestingly enough, Strasberg had just been passed over in recreating her Broadway role for George Stevens' screen rendition of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959).
As expected, the supporting female cast is carefully chosen so as to encompass a wide variety of types among both victims and collaborationists: most notable, however, are Emmanuelle Riva (as the one who initially takes Strasberg under her wing but is then shunned by the new Kapo' and ends up committing suicide via electrocution) and Didi Perego (a Silver Ribbon award winner for Best Supporting Actress as the statuesque leader of the inmates whose outspokenness eventually leads to her being gunned down in cold blood). Pontecorvo (whom I saw at the 2004 Venice Film Festival during a screening of the Michelangelo Antonioni/Wong Kar-Wai/Steven Soderbergh-directed anthology EROS and has since passed away) did not have a prolific career, but his place in the annals of World Cinema is assured on the strength of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS alone; incidentally, he is also credited with collaborating on Carlo Rustichelli's brooding score. As for co-director Montaldo (whose contribution, whatever it entailed, has never been given its due), he was invited over here a couple of years ago to introduce a number of his films screened as part of some Italian festival – but these were oddly scheduled during the mornings, thus making it impossible for me to attend!
Life is beautiful
aswerve1 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Roberto Benigni was hailed as a genius in 1999 for his whimsical and magical film 'Life is beautiful', which was about love surviving all adversities in the harsh playground of a Nazi concentration camp. I never liked that film, I felt it was a low and cheap way of playing the 'Love can survive any obstacle' schtick that filmmakers push on us viewers to make us feel all warm inside.
Wife with cancer. Thats been done. Family in car accident near death. Boring. If Roberto Benigni is such a talent then where is he today? Miramax not backing his films anymore?
KAPO made in 1959 by the Gillo Pontecorvo, who would later go on to make the brilliant 'Battle of Algiers', does more with his film about love surviving through all adversities than Mr Benigni could ever throw up for his own film about the harsh realities human beings had to do in order to survive.
I caught this film just as I was going to sleep late one night and stayed up till the early morning riveted on what would become of 'Nicole', a 14 year old Jewish girl who along with her parents are thrown into a concentration camp during WW2. The little lost girl learns to adapt and survive in the camp which eventually leads her to become the 'Kapo' in the title.
'They lied to us' seems to be the motto of this film, as Nicole learns to trust and look after only herself, until she opens up and discovers there is love once more in her awful life.
I will not give too much away about this powerful and totally mesmerizing film, which once again opens up another story of life inside a concentration camp through the eyes of young Jewish girl who grows up quick and becomes a Nazi lackey in the form of a KAPO.
Wife with cancer. Thats been done. Family in car accident near death. Boring. If Roberto Benigni is such a talent then where is he today? Miramax not backing his films anymore?
KAPO made in 1959 by the Gillo Pontecorvo, who would later go on to make the brilliant 'Battle of Algiers', does more with his film about love surviving through all adversities than Mr Benigni could ever throw up for his own film about the harsh realities human beings had to do in order to survive.
I caught this film just as I was going to sleep late one night and stayed up till the early morning riveted on what would become of 'Nicole', a 14 year old Jewish girl who along with her parents are thrown into a concentration camp during WW2. The little lost girl learns to adapt and survive in the camp which eventually leads her to become the 'Kapo' in the title.
'They lied to us' seems to be the motto of this film, as Nicole learns to trust and look after only herself, until she opens up and discovers there is love once more in her awful life.
I will not give too much away about this powerful and totally mesmerizing film, which once again opens up another story of life inside a concentration camp through the eyes of young Jewish girl who grows up quick and becomes a Nazi lackey in the form of a KAPO.
Despite imperfections, portrait of Jewish collaborator camp guard possesses a heady verisimilitude
Turfseer3 December 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Although it's a very worthwhile film, there are some things about Kapo however that diminish its overall stature in the pantheon of Holocaust related art. For one thing, the story about a teenage Jewish girl who is sent to an extermination camp with her parents, is supposed to be initially set in Paris. But everyone is speaking Italian as it was produced by an Italian production company.
Then there's the problem of the bombastic soundtrack. The weird American sounding score lacks even a modicum of subtlety and tends to underline some of the more unfortunate melodramatic moments in the script.
Nonetheless Kapo remains a valuable lesson about the Holocaust. The cinematography is quite realistic and it has a "you are there" quality. The story's protagonist is Edith (a highly effective Susan Strasberg), the 14 year old Jewish teenager who is shipped off to Auschwitz with her parents. Edith is saved by a kindly doctor in the camp who provides her with the identity of a dead prisoner with a criminal past.
In a harrowing scene, Edith, now ensconced in a barracks of non-Jewish prisoners not marked for execution, witnesses her parents stripped naked, along with a large group of other naked men and women, all being marched into the gas chamber.
While the deaths of those marked for immediate execution at places like Auschwitz was relatively quick, the sadistic machinations of the Nazis were on full display in these labor camps where inmates were forced to perform back-breaking work until some dropped dead along with receiving extremely meager rations and enduring constant beatings from sadistic prisoner guards (the notorious "kapos," culled from the ranks of the inmate population).
It is to one of these labor camps in Poland where Edith is sent with other women who mainly are political prisoners or those with a criminal past. We see how Edith, the frail and emotionally damaged teenager who witnessed her parents being led to their death, is gradually transformed into the hardened prison guard-a collaborator who has earned the contempt of her fellow inmates.
The moment I believe where Edith "sells her soul to the devil" and ultimately is afforded the opportunity to become a Kapo, is when she agrees to perform sexual favors for the SS prison guards. She bonds with one in particular, Karl (Gianni Garko), who notably is the only fleshed out German character here. But even he can hardly be viewed sympathetically with his deluded belief in a favorable destiny for Nazi Germany.
In contrast to Edith (now known as Nicole, the name of the dead Auschwitz inmate she assumed), there is fellow inmate Thérèse (Emmanuelle Riva), a French partisan and German translator in the camp, who initially begs Edith to remain optimistic in the face of the many deprivations the prisoners suffer from. But gradually Thérèse is worn down and after refusing to translate for the camp commandant during the execution of a prisoner accused of sabotage, she is shipped off to solitary confinement and later has her rations cut. Eventually she commits suicide by hurling herself into the electrified fence surrounding the camp.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo does well in chronicling the dreaded "selection process" in the camp-in which infirm inmates (as well as others who are healthy) are selected (often arbitrarily) merely upon the whim of the camp doctor and sent to locations unknown (presumably marked for execution).
Pontecorvo also correctly notes the mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war who are seen brought to the camp where they are basically tortured--forced to move large rocks everyday in an effort to "fortify" positions for defensive purposes (the sound of distant artillery fire signals the approach of the Red Army as the Germans make preparations to flee). Part of those preparations involve orders for all the camp inmates to dig trenches inside the main prison yard of the camp with plans to execute everyone there as soon as the digging is completed.
The last third of the film covers Nicole's burgeoning romance with the Russian prisoner Sascha (Laurent Terzeff). It's because of her that Sascha is forced to stand shirtless in the cold at attention next to the electrified fence. But nonetheless there's something between them and eventually Nicole agrees to help Sascha and his fellow inmates escape by cutting the power to the fence knowing full well she will be executed for doing so.
The climax finds Nicole shot and dying in Karl's arms, exclaiming, "Karl, they screwed us all." However by aiding the inmates, Nicole redeems herself for her decision to become a collaborator leading to her mistreatment of her fellow inmates. Acknowledging her Jewishness, right before dying, she recites the most important Jewish prayer of all, Shema Yisrael.
Despite its imperfections, Kapo manages to provide a stark realistic portrait of Nazi perfidy and the horrific effects upon its victims.
Then there's the problem of the bombastic soundtrack. The weird American sounding score lacks even a modicum of subtlety and tends to underline some of the more unfortunate melodramatic moments in the script.
Nonetheless Kapo remains a valuable lesson about the Holocaust. The cinematography is quite realistic and it has a "you are there" quality. The story's protagonist is Edith (a highly effective Susan Strasberg), the 14 year old Jewish teenager who is shipped off to Auschwitz with her parents. Edith is saved by a kindly doctor in the camp who provides her with the identity of a dead prisoner with a criminal past.
In a harrowing scene, Edith, now ensconced in a barracks of non-Jewish prisoners not marked for execution, witnesses her parents stripped naked, along with a large group of other naked men and women, all being marched into the gas chamber.
While the deaths of those marked for immediate execution at places like Auschwitz was relatively quick, the sadistic machinations of the Nazis were on full display in these labor camps where inmates were forced to perform back-breaking work until some dropped dead along with receiving extremely meager rations and enduring constant beatings from sadistic prisoner guards (the notorious "kapos," culled from the ranks of the inmate population).
It is to one of these labor camps in Poland where Edith is sent with other women who mainly are political prisoners or those with a criminal past. We see how Edith, the frail and emotionally damaged teenager who witnessed her parents being led to their death, is gradually transformed into the hardened prison guard-a collaborator who has earned the contempt of her fellow inmates.
The moment I believe where Edith "sells her soul to the devil" and ultimately is afforded the opportunity to become a Kapo, is when she agrees to perform sexual favors for the SS prison guards. She bonds with one in particular, Karl (Gianni Garko), who notably is the only fleshed out German character here. But even he can hardly be viewed sympathetically with his deluded belief in a favorable destiny for Nazi Germany.
In contrast to Edith (now known as Nicole, the name of the dead Auschwitz inmate she assumed), there is fellow inmate Thérèse (Emmanuelle Riva), a French partisan and German translator in the camp, who initially begs Edith to remain optimistic in the face of the many deprivations the prisoners suffer from. But gradually Thérèse is worn down and after refusing to translate for the camp commandant during the execution of a prisoner accused of sabotage, she is shipped off to solitary confinement and later has her rations cut. Eventually she commits suicide by hurling herself into the electrified fence surrounding the camp.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo does well in chronicling the dreaded "selection process" in the camp-in which infirm inmates (as well as others who are healthy) are selected (often arbitrarily) merely upon the whim of the camp doctor and sent to locations unknown (presumably marked for execution).
Pontecorvo also correctly notes the mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war who are seen brought to the camp where they are basically tortured--forced to move large rocks everyday in an effort to "fortify" positions for defensive purposes (the sound of distant artillery fire signals the approach of the Red Army as the Germans make preparations to flee). Part of those preparations involve orders for all the camp inmates to dig trenches inside the main prison yard of the camp with plans to execute everyone there as soon as the digging is completed.
The last third of the film covers Nicole's burgeoning romance with the Russian prisoner Sascha (Laurent Terzeff). It's because of her that Sascha is forced to stand shirtless in the cold at attention next to the electrified fence. But nonetheless there's something between them and eventually Nicole agrees to help Sascha and his fellow inmates escape by cutting the power to the fence knowing full well she will be executed for doing so.
The climax finds Nicole shot and dying in Karl's arms, exclaiming, "Karl, they screwed us all." However by aiding the inmates, Nicole redeems herself for her decision to become a collaborator leading to her mistreatment of her fellow inmates. Acknowledging her Jewishness, right before dying, she recites the most important Jewish prayer of all, Shema Yisrael.
Despite its imperfections, Kapo manages to provide a stark realistic portrait of Nazi perfidy and the horrific effects upon its victims.
Potentially powerful film weakened by ridiculous romance
tarmcgator28 May 2005
Warning: Spoilers
The first third of "Kapo" is powerful and affecting. The rest, despite the surface realism, borders on the ludicrous.
I doubt that any filmmaker can create a fictional movie that thoroughly encompasses the Holocaust, because it was experienced by such a diverse group of people. In "Kapo," director Gillo Pontecorvo tries earnestly to tell the story of a French teenager who, separated from her Jewish parents, determines that she will survive no matter what. Edith (Susan Strasberg) assumes the guise of "Nicole," a non-Jewish political prisoner who escapes the gas chamber and finds refuge in a group of other female prisoners assigned to a labor camp, where the Nazis essentially work the inmates to death rather than exterminate them outright.
Surviving the labor camp ultimately means becoming a ruthless stooge of the Nazis, and Edith/Nicole's descent into inhumanity is believable, up to a point. She becomes a thief, then a whore for the SS guards, and finally a brutal "Kapo," a privileged prisoner who supervises the other inmates. However, the transition accelerates to a point that the viewer is left wondering just how quickly it is occurring, and just how Edith/Nicole can shed her last shreds of sympathy and compassion for the other prisoners. She enters into a odd friendship with one of the German SS guards (Gianni Garko), but that interesting development is pursued only a little.
Instead, a hunky Russian soldier, Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), arrives with a POW work detail, and, after almost getting him killed by the Germans, "Nicole" falls in love with him -- and "Kapo" starts to tread into Hollywood (or Cinecitta) silliness. (Falling in love with a soldier of the Red Army, rather than with an SS man, would have much more politically correct in 1959 Italy). Nicole's reverse transition from the amoral Kapo to a smitten adolescent, and the love scenes between Strasberg and Terzieff, are simply not believable in the context of what is seen earlier in the film. I suppose the filmmakers would argue that the love affair between "Nicole" and the Russian soldier was necessary to set up the final plot sequence: as the victorious Red Army approaches their camp, the female prisoners and Russian POWs plot a mass escape to forestall their massacre by the fleeing German guards. The denouement of "Kapo" is, perhaps, visually realistic, but it doesn't really mesh with the story of Edith/Nicole that emerges in the early part of the film.
That first 25 or 30 minutes of "Kapo" are powerful and wrenching, as Edith is torn away (seemingly with no warning) from what appears to have been a relatively comfortable, middle-class existence in Paris (as comfortable as it could have been for French Jews in 1942-43) and transported to what we quickly recognize as Auschwitz. In a matter of minutes, Edith is plunged into near-surreal terror and then stripped of her old identity in order to survive as "Nicole." It is a sequence that promises much, which is why I found the rest of the film such a disappointment.
I will not profess expert knowledge of the Holocaust, and perhaps the story told in "Kapo" could have happened. Pontecorvo and co-writer Franco Solinas did extensive research, and "Kapo" certainly has visual authenticity compared with various documentaries I've seen on the subject. Strasberg is effective in her role as Edith/Nicole; the other actors are credible given the roles they have to occupy. There is a noticeable problem with language; the film is in Italian, which the various nationalities represented among the camp inmates all seem to speak fluently and interchangeably; but a key scene involves an inmate translating the camp commandant's speech from German into -- Italian? How many Italian speakers would have been in such a camp? "Kapo," however, ultimately founders on the unbelievable relationship between "Nicole" and Sascha that dominates the second half. I just couldn't buy it.
I doubt that any filmmaker can create a fictional movie that thoroughly encompasses the Holocaust, because it was experienced by such a diverse group of people. In "Kapo," director Gillo Pontecorvo tries earnestly to tell the story of a French teenager who, separated from her Jewish parents, determines that she will survive no matter what. Edith (Susan Strasberg) assumes the guise of "Nicole," a non-Jewish political prisoner who escapes the gas chamber and finds refuge in a group of other female prisoners assigned to a labor camp, where the Nazis essentially work the inmates to death rather than exterminate them outright.
Surviving the labor camp ultimately means becoming a ruthless stooge of the Nazis, and Edith/Nicole's descent into inhumanity is believable, up to a point. She becomes a thief, then a whore for the SS guards, and finally a brutal "Kapo," a privileged prisoner who supervises the other inmates. However, the transition accelerates to a point that the viewer is left wondering just how quickly it is occurring, and just how Edith/Nicole can shed her last shreds of sympathy and compassion for the other prisoners. She enters into a odd friendship with one of the German SS guards (Gianni Garko), but that interesting development is pursued only a little.
Instead, a hunky Russian soldier, Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), arrives with a POW work detail, and, after almost getting him killed by the Germans, "Nicole" falls in love with him -- and "Kapo" starts to tread into Hollywood (or Cinecitta) silliness. (Falling in love with a soldier of the Red Army, rather than with an SS man, would have much more politically correct in 1959 Italy). Nicole's reverse transition from the amoral Kapo to a smitten adolescent, and the love scenes between Strasberg and Terzieff, are simply not believable in the context of what is seen earlier in the film. I suppose the filmmakers would argue that the love affair between "Nicole" and the Russian soldier was necessary to set up the final plot sequence: as the victorious Red Army approaches their camp, the female prisoners and Russian POWs plot a mass escape to forestall their massacre by the fleeing German guards. The denouement of "Kapo" is, perhaps, visually realistic, but it doesn't really mesh with the story of Edith/Nicole that emerges in the early part of the film.
That first 25 or 30 minutes of "Kapo" are powerful and wrenching, as Edith is torn away (seemingly with no warning) from what appears to have been a relatively comfortable, middle-class existence in Paris (as comfortable as it could have been for French Jews in 1942-43) and transported to what we quickly recognize as Auschwitz. In a matter of minutes, Edith is plunged into near-surreal terror and then stripped of her old identity in order to survive as "Nicole." It is a sequence that promises much, which is why I found the rest of the film such a disappointment.
I will not profess expert knowledge of the Holocaust, and perhaps the story told in "Kapo" could have happened. Pontecorvo and co-writer Franco Solinas did extensive research, and "Kapo" certainly has visual authenticity compared with various documentaries I've seen on the subject. Strasberg is effective in her role as Edith/Nicole; the other actors are credible given the roles they have to occupy. There is a noticeable problem with language; the film is in Italian, which the various nationalities represented among the camp inmates all seem to speak fluently and interchangeably; but a key scene involves an inmate translating the camp commandant's speech from German into -- Italian? How many Italian speakers would have been in such a camp? "Kapo," however, ultimately founders on the unbelievable relationship between "Nicole" and Sascha that dominates the second half. I just couldn't buy it.
Surprisingly Realistic
Kelt Smith28 February 2005
I was not previously aware of this gem. I found it on TCM after it had already been on for about 10 minutes. I kept thinking that the lead actress looked just like SUSAN STRASBERG & for good reason. It was. The fact that it was foreign with sub-titles threw me initially. Very realistic, almost raw, which was surprising considering that this movie was made in 1959.
STRASBERG as 'Nicole' works her way up through a concentration camp to become the woman in charge of her fellow prisoners. Strong language, violent situations, but this is a story about WWII, not the 'Enchanted Forest'. Good storyline, good direction, & a terrific performance by SUSAN STRASBERG that was all the more admirable when you realize that she was all of 20,21 when she made this.
STRASBERG as 'Nicole' works her way up through a concentration camp to become the woman in charge of her fellow prisoners. Strong language, violent situations, but this is a story about WWII, not the 'Enchanted Forest'. Good storyline, good direction, & a terrific performance by SUSAN STRASBERG that was all the more admirable when you realize that she was all of 20,21 when she made this.
it's a MUST SEE, as long as you don't mind questioning humanity's existence
siddingo2 September 2006
i'm trying to order a video of this incredible movie, & in so doing have seen the comments about it. i haven't seen this movie in about a year, but i must reply in response to the previous viewer's comments. "kapo" is the zenith of film noir, or should i say, the best of the "film nadir." it may be the darkest movie i've seen. the black & white filming certainly intensifies its starkness. when i first innocently viewed "kapo," i remember being initially surprised, then moved, then deeply disturbed. couldn't susan's choices have been any of ours born at the same wrong time, wrong place? only i may not have chosen the heroic finale that susan chose. her choices introduce that question in ourselves--would we have chosen to save others as she did? or would we have preferred to save ourselves? an eternal dilemma that cannot be answered unless we are actually put into her position--God forbid. released in 1959, 14 years after WWII was over, makes me wonder what movies will be made 14 years from now, or should i say, 14 years from when the war in iraq is over... SEE this movie.
The story of a lady taken arrested by nazis who became a boss of her colleagues in prison.
esteban174711 November 2001
If somebody would like to see what was a nazi prison, one has to see this movies. It showed with realism the nature of cruelty by nazis and the ways they used some of their prisoners to watch the movement of the rest and to combat effectively any possible plot against them. Pontecorvo is a director with a few films, but all of them always show real facts of the history, and this film is not an exception
Decent but I think it just misses the mark.
planktonrules24 May 2015
"Kapò" has an unusual pedigree. It's an Italian-French co- production that was filmed in Yugoslavia! It also was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film--which it lost to Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring".
When the film begins, teenager Edith has been brought to a Nazi death camp along with her parents and many other Jews. Because she was so young, she's been separated and placed with the children-- children who are all going to be liquidated the next day. When Edith learns of this, she runs. But where can you run in a death camp?! She eventually runs into a prisoner who hides her. He also helps her establish a new identity...Nicole, a French kapo. A kapo, in case you didn't know it, was a guard chosen from among the prisoners. This guard was a career criminal or homosexual whose job it was to beat and mistreat their fellow prisoners. So, 'Nicole' was now expected to behave and act like one of these degenerates.
At first, Nicole has great difficulty. After all, she's a young girl and has a decent heart. However, over time, after lots of privation and torment, she adapts to her new role and even seems to excel at being a kapo. What's next?
Up through Edith/Nicole's transformation into a kapo, I was captivated by the film. However, although the final portion is pretty cinematic and 'nice', it also seems to be a bit of a let-down as well as being awfully unrealistic and overly sentimental. How could a person who would do ANYTHING to survive ultimately turn out to be someone who is so full of self-sacrifice? It just didn't make a lot of sense. Additionally, the film was a tad sloppy (such as the sloppy and obviously fake Nazi uniforms and the terrible use of stock footage). As a result, it's a good film but sure seems like it should have been more given its premise.
When the film begins, teenager Edith has been brought to a Nazi death camp along with her parents and many other Jews. Because she was so young, she's been separated and placed with the children-- children who are all going to be liquidated the next day. When Edith learns of this, she runs. But where can you run in a death camp?! She eventually runs into a prisoner who hides her. He also helps her establish a new identity...Nicole, a French kapo. A kapo, in case you didn't know it, was a guard chosen from among the prisoners. This guard was a career criminal or homosexual whose job it was to beat and mistreat their fellow prisoners. So, 'Nicole' was now expected to behave and act like one of these degenerates.
At first, Nicole has great difficulty. After all, she's a young girl and has a decent heart. However, over time, after lots of privation and torment, she adapts to her new role and even seems to excel at being a kapo. What's next?
Up through Edith/Nicole's transformation into a kapo, I was captivated by the film. However, although the final portion is pretty cinematic and 'nice', it also seems to be a bit of a let-down as well as being awfully unrealistic and overly sentimental. How could a person who would do ANYTHING to survive ultimately turn out to be someone who is so full of self-sacrifice? It just didn't make a lot of sense. Additionally, the film was a tad sloppy (such as the sloppy and obviously fake Nazi uniforms and the terrible use of stock footage). As a result, it's a good film but sure seems like it should have been more given its premise.
Haunting
evanston_dad15 August 2018
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
Fails to fulfil early promise
ArtVandelayImporterExporter25 January 2022
The opening scene where Susan Strasberg walks home from a piano lesson only to see her parents getting hauled off by the Nahtzies is just the beginning of her harrowing ordeal. She catches a break when she meets a longtime inmate, who takes her to the camp doctor for protection. And she gets psychological support from another inmate (Emmanuelle Riva).
The problem with this movie, however, is that Strasbert's motivations are not credible. The filmmakers want me to believe she was a wide-eyed innocent skipping home from piano lessons and watched her parents marched off to the gas chambers within a day of getting to the camp. Then she gets s3xually used by an SS guard. And before you know it, she's a bunk cop (KAPO). Boom. There goes my sympathy. Meanwhile, several more sympathetic - and interesting - characters get picked off.
And then the movie veers right into the ditch of unbelievability. First she's pals with a camp guard (not the guy who abused her). Then he sorta disappears or fades while Strasberg nearly gets a Soviet POW killed while simultaneously falling in love with him. It's all so preposterous.
By the time the final act of redemption comes around my mind was wandering back to the other, more noble characters who bit it along the way.
I also didn't care about the Soviet guy's fate. Sorry.
The problem with this movie, however, is that Strasbert's motivations are not credible. The filmmakers want me to believe she was a wide-eyed innocent skipping home from piano lessons and watched her parents marched off to the gas chambers within a day of getting to the camp. Then she gets s3xually used by an SS guard. And before you know it, she's a bunk cop (KAPO). Boom. There goes my sympathy. Meanwhile, several more sympathetic - and interesting - characters get picked off.
And then the movie veers right into the ditch of unbelievability. First she's pals with a camp guard (not the guy who abused her). Then he sorta disappears or fades while Strasberg nearly gets a Soviet POW killed while simultaneously falling in love with him. It's all so preposterous.
By the time the final act of redemption comes around my mind was wandering back to the other, more noble characters who bit it along the way.
I also didn't care about the Soviet guy's fate. Sorry.
My brief review of the film
sol-18 April 2006
With an effectively haunting music score and excellent sound work, the audio side of this film brings the horrors of living in a Holocaust concentration camp - and the changes in values one experiences under harsh conditions - right to the surface. For the most part, Susan Strasberg is superb as an innocent-looking Jewish girl taken prisoner and forced to change her way of thinking. However, with a limited sense of time, her changes in attitude are not gradual enough to be realistic. Everything that happens in the film takes place over months, but the filmmakers make it feel like only a few days. There is also an ill-conceived romantic subplot that weighs against the film too, and it has a tendency to be overly melodramatic at times. Still, a large amount of skill can be seen in the picture, and the panning camera-work also keeps the visual side of the film interesting. The well used music score and Strasberg are certainly worth watching for - it simply falls a little short of being excellent viewing.
Now that Humanity has devolved into the Fake News Era . . .
tadpole-596-91825618 February 2018
Warning: Spoilers
. . . even the sleaziest two-bit failed nation states can erect walls against any outside influences, rewrite their sordid pages of historic infamy, and pass laws to barbecue anyone within their borders who dares whisper the Actual Truth. At 20:15, KAPO enters the most notorious such "country" (whose English name rhymes with "No Sand") to document a tiny fraction of that region's Crimes against Humanity in the 1900s. (Bruce Willis is taking up Charles Bronson's DEATH WISH role, and I guess I sort of have on too, since I watched KAPO in an easily tracked and hacked format, subjecting me to the roving international Death Squads of these Anti-Truthers, whose nationality rhymes with "trolls.") If you, too, are brave enough to watch KAPO, you'll see exactly why these malicious miscreants are so Hell-bent upon distorting, covering up, denying, erasing, and white-washing What Really Happened. This, of course, is merely the prelude to these barbarians' end game. They're now plotting to bull-doze, raze, and obliterate "their" World Heritage Memorial Sites--including the one shown in KAPO--to "clean up" the Holocaust "as if it never even happened."
stuck in danger with only one way out
lee_eisenberg3 November 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Gillo Pontecorvo's Academy Award-nominated "Kapò" tells the story of a young Jewish woman sent to a concentration camp where she eventually gets put in charge of other prisoners due to her fraternization with a guard. The viewer understands that young Edith (Susan Strasberg) is so terrorized by what she experiences that her desperation drives her to align herself with the oppressors. In other prisoners' cases, they kill themselves by throwing themselves against the fence.
Obviously this movie isn't as hard-hitting as "Schindler's List", but it still bears watching as an indictment of fascist Italy's participation in Germany's extermination of anyone deemed the "wrong" kind of person (whether it was Jews, progressives, LGBTs, or someone else). I don't know whether or not Italy had made a notable movie focusing on the Holocaust prior to this, but this movie doesn't gloss over anything. There's even a scene where the prisoners are forced to march naked.
Harrowing movie, but an excellent one. I recommend it. Also starring Laurent Terzieff and Emmanuelle Riva.
Obviously this movie isn't as hard-hitting as "Schindler's List", but it still bears watching as an indictment of fascist Italy's participation in Germany's extermination of anyone deemed the "wrong" kind of person (whether it was Jews, progressives, LGBTs, or someone else). I don't know whether or not Italy had made a notable movie focusing on the Holocaust prior to this, but this movie doesn't gloss over anything. There's even a scene where the prisoners are forced to march naked.
Harrowing movie, but an excellent one. I recommend it. Also starring Laurent Terzieff and Emmanuelle Riva.
Sloppy Work
TheRationalist2 July 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This could have been a good movie, the story was there but it failed. Scene after scene that was just not realistic or believable. I was shocked at how sloppy Pontecorvo was in allowing so many careless takes. The women, who were supposed to be starving, diseased etc. etc. looked exactly like what they were...extras dressed in clean uniforms and fresh from a satisfying lunch at the commissary. When a German machine-gunner guns down thirty or forty people, what should the scene look like? Some motionless dead people, but mostly people in all stages of being wounded, crawling, screaming, some limping away etc.. Pontecorvo gave us forty motionless supposedly dead bodies, almost all face down, then the hero rises up unscathed and walks away. The subplot of the gal's relationship with the blond German officer was not only unbelievable but didn't go anywhere. Susan Strasberg, a virgin young girl goes into the bedroom to give herself to a German officer to gain better treatment, comes back out of the bedroom perfectly made up and looking exactly the way she did when she went in...come on! Sorry, just can't recommend this one.
Nuit et brouillard
dbdumonteil8 October 2006
Although it features two French leads (Laurent Terzieff and Emmanuelle Riva) ,"Kapo" has disappeared from the French dictionaries of films whereas lots of duds are included.
With the exceptions of "Nuit et Brouillard" (which was an exceptional documentary ) and Wanda Jakubowska 's "ostatni etap' (1947) there were few movies which at the time broached the concentration camps subject(the last scenes of Dmytryk's "young lions" ,1958)
Susan Strasberg was impressive ,mainly in the first hour though the evolution of her character is not always believable.Besides,her relationship with Sascha weakens the plot .
Emmanuelle Riva almost outshines Strasberg,maybe because she was a more experimented actress (she was featured in Resnais's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" ) and her scene when she is translating the German words in a voice chocked with emotion may be the strongest in the whole movie.
The "potato" scene is also revealing.I remember what Simone Veil ,a former French minister (secretary) (and herself a former prisoner in a concentration camp),said after watching the last episode of "Holocaust " (the seventies miniseries) : "in the camps ,people were not as helpful ,as kind ,as compassionate as they are in the film" ."Kapo" shows a very harsh world where the women are almost always fighting against their mates:that's the story of Edith /Nicole .
When it was released ,the movie was trashed by Jacques Rivette because of a tracking after Riva 's death ;at the time Nouvelle vague= intellectual dictatorship.Although defended by the Italian masters (including Visconti),the movie was cursed .The IMDb users have restored it to favor.
With the exceptions of "Nuit et Brouillard" (which was an exceptional documentary ) and Wanda Jakubowska 's "ostatni etap' (1947) there were few movies which at the time broached the concentration camps subject(the last scenes of Dmytryk's "young lions" ,1958)
Susan Strasberg was impressive ,mainly in the first hour though the evolution of her character is not always believable.Besides,her relationship with Sascha weakens the plot .
Emmanuelle Riva almost outshines Strasberg,maybe because she was a more experimented actress (she was featured in Resnais's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" ) and her scene when she is translating the German words in a voice chocked with emotion may be the strongest in the whole movie.
The "potato" scene is also revealing.I remember what Simone Veil ,a former French minister (secretary) (and herself a former prisoner in a concentration camp),said after watching the last episode of "Holocaust " (the seventies miniseries) : "in the camps ,people were not as helpful ,as kind ,as compassionate as they are in the film" ."Kapo" shows a very harsh world where the women are almost always fighting against their mates:that's the story of Edith /Nicole .
When it was released ,the movie was trashed by Jacques Rivette because of a tracking after Riva 's death ;at the time Nouvelle vague= intellectual dictatorship.Although defended by the Italian masters (including Visconti),the movie was cursed .The IMDb users have restored it to favor.
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