The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann

Compared to Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, Gone with the Wind and Cleopatra (starring Liz Taylor) were relatively short and painless productions. Lanzmann’s monumental nine-and-a-half-hour documentary took twelve years to complete, including one month spent in hospital as the filmmaker recovered from an assault perpetrated by thugs loyal to a former SS officer. Lanzmann discusses that failed interview, as well as other challenges he faced documenting the Holocaust in Adam Benzine’s The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann, an expanded director’s cut of Benzine’s Oscar-nominated short documentary, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, which is now available on VOD platforms.

The original 39-minute film left admirers wanting more, so Benzine incorporated 20-minutes of additional footage, including outtakes from Shoah restored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It isn’t just about Shoah. Lanzmann also discusses his relationship with his former lover Simone de Beauvoir and their mutual friend, Jean-Paul Sartre, but his towering cinematic achievement clearly altered the course of his life (and arguably film history).

Regardless, Benzine’s film is dominated by two extraordinarily powerful sections. On focuses on the techniques and strategies Lanzmann employed to interview a surviving Sonderkommando, a Jewish slave laborer tasked with cleaning out the gas chamber after every mass execution. It is hard to watch the barber breaking down from the weight of Lanzmann’s questions, but the filmmaker convinces him to carry on, for his own sake.

The second unforgettably chilling passage focuses on the aborted interview of SS-Obersturmfuhrer Heinz Schubert, whose family deduced Lanzmann and his assistant Corinna Coulmas were secretly recording the convicted war criminal. It was their associates who severely beat Lanzmann and Coulmas.

Throughout the film, Benzine conveys a good sense of Lanzmann’s personality and working methods. Clearly, he would have either been the absolute worst or best filmmaker to tackle a project like Shoah because of his compulsive perfectionism and obsessive attention to detail. Fortunately, it turned out to be the latter case.

Frankly, Benzine’s extended cut arrives at a timely moment—and not just because it marks the 40^th anniversary of Shoah’s theatrical release and the centennial of Lanzmann’s 11/27/1925 birth. It provides an important reminder that Lanzmann supported the State of Israel, having documented the perennially besieged nation in his first film, Israel, Why?. Indeed, Lanzmann’s filmography thoroughly and powerfully answered that question of why. Highly recommended for all audiences (especially current students of film, studying on hate-filled campuses), The Death and Love of Claude Lanzmann is now available on digital VOD platforms, including Vimeo.