--- title: "Shoah: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/shoah/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/shoah" critics_score: 88 critics_reviews: 8 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Shoah (1985): what the critics said Critics' score 88 from 8 reviews: 8 positive, 0 mixed, 0 negative. The reviews are unanimous in their admiration. Every critic returns to the same decision: Lanzmann uses no archive footage at all, only present-day testimony from survivors and witnesses, and long takes of the places where the killing happened. Most describe this as the source of the film’s force, with the faces, the voices and the empty landscapes around the former camps doing the work that newsreel would ordinarily do. Several remark on how the horror is made to feel present rather than past, and on the patience and persistence of Lanzmann’s questioning. The reservations are few and narrow. Empire raises doubts about Lanzmann’s interviewing methods and the film’s reliability as history, though it still finds the result powerful and moving. The AV Club suggests some passages could be trimmed at this length. The New Yorker, writing on a re-release, finds it illuminated further by more recent scholarship. Nobody argues against it. ## The AV Club — Sam Adams Rating A. 26 June 2013. The critic praises Shoah as a monumental film that captures the enormity of the Holocaust through its length and unhurried approach, noting how it makes the absence and silence speak volumes, though some passages could be trimmed. They highlight Lanzmann's focus on faces, locations, and the perpetual present of the horror. [Read the review](https://www.avclub.com/shoah-1798177189) ## Film Comment — J. Hoberman Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 1 May 2013. The critic affirms Shoah as a great and singular movie whose power lies in its contemplation of landscapes, faces, and voices rather than conventional cinematic technique. He singles out its ability to compel viewers to imagine the unimaginable through recordings of absence and presence. [Read the review](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/shoah-claude-lanzmann-dvd-review/) ## Los Angeles Times — Kevin Thomas Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 27 December 1985. Thomas calls Shoah a great work of art and a monument against forgetting, praising Lanzmann's method of making the horror accessible and comprehensible through interviews and present-day filming of the sites without archival footage. [Read the review](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-27-ca-25686-story.html) ## Sight and Sound — John Pym Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 5 July 2018. The critic praises Lanzmann's innovative approach of using only contemporary testimonies and locations without archive footage to convey the Holocaust's enormity, highlighting the power of survivor and witness interviews and the film's dispassionate yet relentless accumulation of evidence. [Read the review](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/shoah-enormity-too-huge-hour-too-late) ## Slant Magazine — Ed Gonzalez Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 29 September 2003. The critic praises Shoah as one of the most life-affirming works of art ever produced for the cinema, despite cataloging horrifying events. They single out Lanzmann's use of survivor testimonies and present-day footage of camp sites and countrysides, rather than archival material, to convey the enduring impact of the Holocaust. [Read the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/shoah/) ## The New York Times — Vincent Canby Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 23 October 1985. The critic praises the film's extraordinary accomplishment as an oral history of the Holocaust unlike any other, relying on contemporary testimony rather than archival footage to bring the past back with devastating clarity. It highlights the persistent, informed interviewing and the way the film makes the unspeakable spoken through survivors' accounts. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/27/movies/excerpt-from-the-review-of-shoah.html) ## The New Yorker — David Denby Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 2 January 2011. Denby finds the re-release of Shoah still powerful and illuminating, especially in light of new historical context from Snyder's book, praising its method of bringing the past into the present through testimony and location filming. [Read the review](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/10/look-again) ## Empire — David Parkinson Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 26 June 2006. The critic notes doubts about Lanzmann's interviewing methods and the film's historical reliability but concludes that Shoah remains immensely powerful and moving. The landscape footage around the former camps, evoking lingering scars and hidden secrets, is singled out as especially impactful. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/shoah-review/) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/shoah.md