Iconography of the Red Dress

Images can have great emotional impact on the audiences than literary texts. One such example is the iconography of the Red Dress in the movie Schindler’s List, which is an adaptation of the novel Schindler’s Ark. In the final scenes of Schindler’s List, Ben Kingsley says “One who saves the life, saves thousands”. Viewers come to witness the true story of one man Oskar Schindler, who dashes over 1,100 Jewish souls. His story survives one of the darkest times in history. Director, Steven Spielberg, has given the audience an extremely powerful presentation of the Holocaust. Among the many masterful scenes in the film, one scene in particular is vital to the true meaning behind the character of Oskar Schindler: The destruction of Cracow’s Jewish ghetto, where the viewer’s attention is drawn to a little girl in red coat. This scene reveals the character and theme brought forth through a number of cinematic techniques such as use of color, camera movements and sound. Such a depiction is hard to extract while reading a written text.