Starring: Tom Bell, Joseph Bottoms, Tovah Feldshuh, Marius Goring, Rosemary Harris Directed By: Marvin J. Chomsky Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: DVD Format: Box set, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC Label: Paramount Number of Items: 3 Region Code: 1 Release Date: May 27, 2008 Running Time: 420 minutes Theatrical Release Date: April 16, 1978
Amazon.com: The 30th anniversary edition of Holocaust marks the first time this remarkable, nine-and-a-half-hour television miniseries has been released on DVD. Originally broadcast on NBC as part of an ongoing TV phenomenon in the 1970s called "The Big Event," Holocaust was an original story written by Gerald Green, who later scripted Kent State and Wallenberg: A Hero's Story, the latter another Holocaust-era tale. Holocaust narrowed the enormous story of the Nazis' systematic destruction of Jews by focusing on one family living in Berlin. Fritz Weaver plays Dr. Josef Weiss, a Pole with a longtime family practice. Weiss debates with his wife, Berta (Rosemary Harris), the wisdom of moving out of Germany with their family. She insists they should not be chased away by Hitler, and by the time she thinks otherwise, it's too late for her, her parents, Josef, and the three Weiss children: Karl (James Woods), Rudi (Joseph Bottoms), and Anna (Blanche Baker). Holocaust begins with the marriage of Karl to Inga (Meryl Streep), a Christian, an arrangement already frowned upon by the rising Nazi regime in 1935. In time, Karl, a harmless artist, is dragged off to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, leaving Inga vulnerable to a predatory camp officer who passes notes between the husband and wife. Poor young Anna meets a grim fate that reveals something of the way Hitler was determined to eliminate the mentally ill along with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups of people. The rebellious Rudi ends up fighting the Germans from a different front, while Josef is deported to Warsaw, eventually joined by Berta. There, Holocaust details the plight of the walled-in, so-called Warsaw ghetto, and the despair of the people within. Meanwhile, the destiny of another important character, a rather effete lawyer named Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), offers a peek into the internal workings of the Holocaust machinery. Dorf takes a much-needed job as an aide to Reinhard Heydrich (David Warner), Gestapo head and chair of the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which finalized plans for the extermination of European Jews. Holocaust was criticized at the time of its broadcast for allegedly cheapening genocide by shrinking the dimensions of the Nazis' organized evil for commercial television. But as a story free to extend into different aspects of the war on Jews, Holocaust is a real eye-opener. Tom Bell, Ian Holm, Robert Stephens, and Sam Wanamaker are also featured in the cast. --Tom Keogh
Description: An original TV dramatization of one of the most monstrous crimes in world history - the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. Dramatically and definitively, the story covers an entire decade, the eventful years from 1935 to 1945. HOLOCAUST focuses on the tragedy and triumph of a single family - the Weiss family. Their story is told in counter-poise to that of another fictional family, that of Erik Dorf, who portrays a Nazi aide to Germany's infamous Heydrich. Starring a brilliant international cast and filmed on location in Berlin and Vienna.
Sensational! I first saw this mini-series on television back in the 70's. I was very pleased when it finally came out on DVD. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this period of history.
CBS/Paramount Hits New Low Quite frankly I didn't think that CBS/Paramount could do any worse than their mediocre (at best) transfers of Beauty and the Beast and The Waltons (not to mention the truly wretched packaging of that last series). The megacorporation has surpassed itself with their release of the important mini-series Holocaust. Not only is the transfer as poor as that of Beauty and the Beast and The Waltons but the release does not even contain the complete mini-series (caveat emptor: CBS/Paramount tells you in a microcopic sized sentence that this "may" (I love the ambiguity here) not contain the complete series.
This release shows (if further evidence was needed) that CBS/Paramount does not care about the quality production of DVDs. It shows that they don't care about TV history. It shows that they don't care about consumers or they wouldn't routinely put out such poor transfers. It shows that they care only about one thing--profit (since the DVD's they release are clearly produced at the lowest possible cost to them). A pox on both their houses. DON'T BUY THIS. WRITE CBS/PARAMOUNT (VIACOM) TO COMPLAIN. If you don't do either you are perpetuating what is surely some of the worst practises within the DVD industry. And you deserve what you get.
Holocaust I saw this miniseries when it first came out. I still love the movie!
Well done Mini-series Great cast and very thoughtful. I think it is one of the better movies done about the Holocaust. Very underated.
Great miniseries I had been looking for this DVD and couldn't find it anywhere. Then I recieved an e-mail from Amazon stating that it was coming out in a couple of weeks. I was so glad. The acting is superb and the movie is as good as I remembered it to be. This is one title definately worth adding to your collection. On the down side the picture quality could be much better than it is. I would have thought that they would have brought it up to the standards of today.
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