Script To Screen: “Schindler’s List”
From the 1993 movie Schindler’s List (screenplay by Steve Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Keneally).
Setup: Oskar Schindler has been out riding his horse when he stops on a hilltop and witnesses the clearing of the ghetto in Krakow, tracking the movements of the Girl In Red.
EXT. HILLTOP - DAWN From here, the action down below seems staged,
unreal; the rifle bursts no louder than caps.
Dismounting, Schindler moves closer to the edge of
the hill, curious. His attention is drawn to a small distant figure, all
in red, at the rear of one of the many columns. EXT. STREET - DAWN Small red shoes against a forest of gleaming black
boots. A Waffen SS man occasionally corrects the
little girl's drift, fraternally it seems, nudging
her gently back in line with the barrel of his rifle.
A volley of shots echoes from up the street. EXT. HILLTOP - DAWN Schindler watches as the girl slowly wanders away
unnoticed by the SS. Against the grays of the
buildings and street she's like a moving red target. EXT. STREET - DAWN A truck thundering down the street obscures her for a
moment. Then she's moving past a pile of bodies, old people
executed in the street. EXT. HILLTOP - DAWN Schindler watches: she's so conspicuous, yet she
keeps moving -- past crowds, past dogs, past trucks
-- as though she were invisible. EXT. STREET - DAWN Patients in white gowns, and doctors and nurses in
white, are herded out the doors of a convalescent
hospital. The small figure in red moves past them.
Shots explode behind her. EXT. HILLTOP - DAWN Short bursts of light flash throughout the ghetto
like stars. Schindler, fixated on the figure in red, loses sight
of her as she turns a corner. INT. APARTMENT BUILDING - DAWN She climbs the stairs. The building is empty. She
steps inside an apartment and moves through it. It's
been ransacked. As she crawls under the bed, the
scene DRAINS of COLOR. The gunfire outside sounds like firecrackers.
Here is the scene from the movie:
This is a great example of a script conveying the structure and tone of the scene while providing some key specifics. Clearly, Spielberg worked with Zaillian to include those moments and just as clearly, the director knew he would embellish what was written in the script with a lot more, e.g., lining up the men to shoot them with one bullet, then killing the two survivors by shooting them in the head.
The main thing is the brilliant idea to focus on the Girl In Red. The cross cuts between her journey and Schindler tracking her — the specificity of this single endangered character — is what really gets to him. It represents a turning point in the Protagonist’s attitude about working with the Nazis and setting him on a path to help free imprisoned Jews.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script To Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more Script To Screen articles, go here.
