Kapò
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| Kapò | |
|---|---|
 Italian film poster |
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| Directed by | Gillo Pontecorvo |
| Produced by | Franco Cristaldi Moris Ergas |
| Written by | Gillo Pontecorvo Franco Solinas |
| Starring | Susan Strasberg Didi Perego Laurent Terzieff |
| Music by | Carlo Rustichelli |
| Cinematography | Aleksandar Sekulovic |
| Distributed by | Cineriz |
| Release date(s) | Italy 1959 1 June 1964 USA |
| Running time | 116 minutes (US); 118 minutes (Spain) |
| Country | Italy France Yugoslavia |
Kapò is an Italian film about the Holocaust directed by Gillo Pontecorvo in 1959. It was nominated for the Academy Award as best foreign film. It was an Italian-French co-production filmed in Yugoslavia.
[edit] Plot
Naive fourteen-year-old Edith (Susan Strasberg) and her Jewish parents are sent to a concentration camp, where the latter are killed. Sofia (Didi Perego), an older, political prisoner, and a kindly camp doctor save her from a similar fate by giving her a new, non-Jewish identity, that of the newly dead Nichole Niepas.
As time goes by, she becomes more hardened to the brutal life. She first sells her body to a German guard in return for food; she becomes fond of another guard, Karl (Gianni Garko). The fraternization helps her become a kapo, one of those put in charge of the other prisoners. She thrives while the idealistic Sofia grows steadily weaker.
When she falls in love with Sascha (Laurent Terzieff), a Russian prisoner of war, Edith is persuaded to play a crucial role in a mass escape, turning off the power. Most of the would-be escapees are killed, but some get away. Edith is not one of them. As she lies dying, she tells Karl, "They screwed us over, Karl, they screwed us both over."
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Kapò at the Internet Movie Database
- (French) Column « De l'Abjection » by Jacques Rivette (1961) devoted to Pontecorvo's Kapo, L'oBservatoire site.
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