Schindler's List

IN BLACK AND WHITE:

TRAIN WHEELS grinding against track, slowing. FOLDING TABLE

LEGS scissoring open. The LEVER of a train door being pulled.

NAMES on lists on clipboards held by clerks moving alongside

the tracks.

CLERKS (V.O.)

...Rossen... Lieberman... Wachsberg...

BEWILDERED RURAL FACES coming down off the passenger train.

FORMS being set out on the folding tables. HANDS straightening

pens and pencils and ink pads and stamps.

CLERKS (V.O.)

...When your name is called go over

there... take this over to that

table...

TYPEWRITER KEYS rapping a name onto a list. A FACE. KEYS

typing another name. Another FACE.

CLERKS (V.O.)

...you’re in the wrong line, wait

over there... you, come over here...

A MAN is taken from one long line and led to the back of

another. A HAND hammers a rubber stamp at a form. Tight on a

FACE. KEYS type another NAME. Another FACE. Another NAME.

CLERKS (V.O.)

...Biberman... Steinberg...

Chilowitz...

As a hand comes down stamping a GRAY STRIPE across a

registration card, there is absolute silence... then MUSIC,

the Hungarian love song, "Gloomy Sunday," distant... and the

stripe bleeds into COLOR, into BRIGHT YELLOW INK.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - CRACOW, POLAND - NIGHT

The song plays from a radio on a rust-stained sink.

The light in the room is dismal, the furniture cheap. The

curtains are faded, the wallpaper peeling... but the clothes

laid out across the single bed are beautiful.

The hands of a man button the shirt, belt the slacks. He

slips into the double-breasted jacket, knots the silk tie,

folds a handkerchief and tucks it into the jacket pocket,

all with great deliberation.

A bureau. Some currency, cigarettes, liquor, passport. And

an elaborate gold-on-black enamel Hakenkreuz (or swastika)

which the gentleman pins to the lapel of his elegant dinner

jacket.

He steps back to consider his reflection in the mirror. He

likes what he sees: Oskar Schindler -- salesman from Zwittau --

looking almost reputable in his one nice suit.

Even in this awful room.

INT. NIGHTCLUB - CRACOW, POLAND - NIGHT

A spotlight slicing across a crowded smoke-choked club to a

small stage where a cabaret performer sings.

It’s September, 1939. General Sigmund List's armored

divisions, driving north from the Sudetenland, have taken

Cracow, and now, in this club, drinking, socializing,

conducting business, is a strange clientele: SS officers and

Polish cops, gangsters and girls and entrepreneurs, thrown

together by the circumstance of war.

Oskar Schindler, drinking alone, slowly scans the room, the

faces, stripping away all that’s unimportant to him, settling

only on details that are: the rank of this man, the higher

rank of that one, money being slipped into a hand.

WAITER SETS DOWN DRINKS

in front of the SS officer who took the money. A lieutenant,

he’s at a table with his girlfriend and a lower-ranking

officer.

WAITER:

From the gentleman.

The waiter is gesturing to a table across the room where

Schindler, seemingly unaware of the SS men, drinks with the

best-looking woman in the place.

LIEUTENANT:

Do I know him?

His sergeant doesn’t. His girlfriend doesn't.

LIEUTENANT:

Find out who he is.

The sergeant makes his way over to Schindler's table.

There's a handshake and introductions before -- and the

lieutenant, watching, can't believe it -- his guy accepts

the chair Schindler's dragging over.

The lieutenant waits, but his man doesn't come back; he's

forgotten already he went there for a reason. Finally, and

it irritates the SS man, he has to get up and go over there.

LIEUTENANT:

Stay here.

His girlfriend watches him cross toward Schindler's table.

Before he even arrives, Schindler is up and berating him for

leaving his date way over there across the room, waving at

the girl to come join them, motioning to waiter to slide

some tables together.

WAITERS ARRIVE WITH PLATES OF CAVIAR

and another round of drinks. The lieutenant makes a

halfhearted move for his wallet.

LIEUTENANT:

Let me get this one.

SCHINDLER:

No, put it away, put it away.

Schindler's already got his money out. Even as he's paying,

his eyes are working the room, settling on a table where a

girl is declining the advances of two more high-ranking SS

men.

A TABLECLOTH BILLOWS

as a waiter lays it down on another table that's been added

to the others. Schindler seats the SS officers on either

side of his own "date" --

SCHINDLER:

What are you drinking, gin?

He motions to a waiter to refill the men's drinks, and,

returning to the head of the table(s), sweeps the room again

with his eyes.

ROAR OF LAUGHTER

erupts from Schindler's party in the corner. Nobody's having

a better time than those people over there. His guests have

swelled to ten or twelve -- SS men, Polish cops, girls --

and he moves among them like the great entertainer he is,

making sure everybody's got enough to eat and drink.

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