Samson is a 1961 film made by Academy Award-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda that uses art house aesthetics to tell a story about the Holocaust. Wajda's World War II film alludes to the Old Testament story of Samson, who had supernatural physical strength. But unlike the Biblical character, Wajda's Samson has great emotional strength.
A dark coming-of-age film, Samson follows its Jewish protagonist (Serge Merlin) from an anti-Semitic private...
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Samson is a 1961 film made by Academy Award-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda that uses art house aesthetics to tell a story about the Holocaust. Wajda's World War II film alludes to the Old Testament story of Samson, who had supernatural physical strength. But unlike the Biblical character, Wajda's Samson has great emotional strength.
A dark coming-of-age film, Samson follows its Jewish protagonist (Serge Merlin) from an anti-Semitic private school to a prison, then into a Jewish ghetto, and finally over the ghetto wall to the outside world. Wajda uses this journey as a means to explore expressionist cinematography and the weighty issues facing the Jewish people.
The construction of the Jewish ghetto is communicated through a single, stationary shot. A shabbily dressed mass is clustered in front of the camera, and a pair of hands with a hammer and nails secures one board at a time, until the shot of people has been replaced with a shot of a wall. Through minimalism and simplicity...
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