Genre Analysis - Escape From Auschwitz

Escape from Auschwitz

This documentary type was mixed, with strong elements of self reflective documentaries. It would be classed as a mixed type of documentary, as it included voiceover, interview and archive footage. Mixed documentaries tend to use interviews and voiceover to structure the documentary, in order to allow the narrative structure to become clearer.

Themes of Escape from Auschwitz included death, war, guns, Poland and concentration camps. The subject matter was very dark, and dealt with World War II, and the terror many people faced under Hitler’s reign of terror. These themes were conveyed through archived interviews and real archive footage from wartime, which shocked and interested viewers; they are getting an exclusive look at the Second World War. This leads to empathy from the viewers; they are seeing the devastation as if they were there, and are told accounts from real people who suffered under the tyrannical regime.

Narrative structure within the documentary began with the exposition – Did anyone escape from Auschwitz? Who escaped? What happened to them? Questions like this were asked throughout the documentary; the middle had conflict to the exposition. It was at first suggested that people had escaped from the concentration camp, but in the middle, news of deportation and the question ‘Will people ever become free of Auschwitz?’ was asked. The end concluded that out of 800 potential escapees, only 400 people successfully escaped the concentration camp. This brought an odd equilibrium to the ending; the world was back to normal, but millions of people around the world had died as a result of the war.

Camerawork within this documentary included a lot of tracking, following people around the remains of Auschwitz and panning showing the whole scene, along with long shots to reinforce the scenes of devastation. Within archive footage of Auschwitz, there were a lot of simplistic panning shots, possibly because there were not a lot of cameras around at the time, and this enabled a whole setting to be shown in one swoop. In other archive footage, interviews were also shot with a static camera, and interviewees were always in close up format. This let the audience empathize with them more, as you could see their true emotion when they were talking, which made it easy for the audience to focus on them, and sympathize.

Mise-en-scene within Escape from Auschwitz was mainly on location at Auschwitz; it was filmed in the wintertime, so there was snow around the whole area, which connoted death, winter and worry. Within the archived interviews, there was a black background which meant that the interviewee commanded the attention of the viewer and their facial emotions were more ‘raw’ and clear. Other interviews were conducted at the interviewee’s home, which made the interviewee more comfortable and relaxed, which meant that they answered questions and told their story more precisely, with less exaggeration. This documentary was very dark, both in subject matter and mise-en-scene. Most footage was black and white as it was archived from the 1940’s and 50’s, which is a time when colour recording was not yet invented.

In terms of sound, throughout the documentary, there was an intriguing mystery style non-diegetic music bed. This connoted wonder and created tension in the documentary – what will happen next? A voiceover narrated pictures, with related visuals to the speech from archive footage. There was also speech from the archived interviews which was layered over other archived footage; videos from inside gas chambers etc. During some interviews, the people who were interviewed were Polish (which would be expected, due to the subject matter) and so, there was an English translation dubbed over their speech. This helped the audience, as normally, they would not be able to understand many of the survivors, but the documentary helped to break down the language barrier.

Editing within Escape from Auschwitz used a lot of fades, dissolves and cuts between archive materials, in order to vary footage, which often looks very similar. On the static archive footage, zooms and pans were used as transitions in order to make the documentary more exciting and less repetitive. The editing within the documentary also matched with the beat of the music bed, which was effective at making the documentary flow more smoothly.

A lot of archive material was used within the documentary – it was based on archive footage, and links between archive materials were the most recent footage shot. There were many pictures from WWII and video footage from the concentration camp. There were archived videos from inside Auschwitz, and tracking crane shots showing the whole of the complex.

Graphics within Escape from Auschwitz were largely simplistic apart from the links between archived footage and interviews; the titles included spotlights showing various parts of archive footage, and the actual title font was in the style as if it had been scrawled on a prison wall which hinted at the macabre nature of the documentary. At various points in the documentary, there was a computerized map showing the audience were Auschwitz was in relation to other important WWII landmarks. This added a sense of modernity to the documentary, and contrasted the overall theme; we have moved on from times of black and white footage and discriminatory wars. Other graphics were extremely simple; small, thin white font at the bottom left of the screen, simply telling the viewer the name of an interviewee, or the location of the footage.