Classification:

Just when we thought that Steven Spielberg, brilliant though he is, might never make a truly adult movie he came up with this. During the Second World War Oskar Schindler, an Austrian businessman, saved the lives of countless Jews by persuading the Nazis to let them work in his factory rather than die in concentration camps. His motive initially was profit - this was a cheap labour force - but eventually sheer humanity: he wanted to save 'his Jews'.

The story, based on a novel itself based firmly on fact, could easily have lent itself to sentimentality. Spielberg avoids that, just as, except towards the end, he avoids trying to explain the complex and probaly inexplicable Schindler. This is a film of marvellous tension and horror, in which the enormity of the Holocaust - the more heartrending for being almost casually depicted - and the mindless cruelty of the Nazi prison camp commandant (Fiennes) speak vividly themselves. The acting of Neeson, as Schindler, of Kingsley, as his Jewish accountant, and if Fiennes is fautless, but the true star of the film is the director, whose work, though superb, is admirably unobtrusive and always the servant, never the master, of his material. There is no preaching here, no editorial comment for none is needed.

This is a story that seems simply to unfold just as the events it chronicles must have done and therefore the actions of the Nazis seem all the more terrifying and appalling and those of Schindler the more amazing. The one eye-catching trick Spielberg permits himself - the recurring motif of a little girl in a red coat providing the only splash of colour - is splendidly vindicated because of all the victims in the film it is this girl, mostly seen only at a distance, whom you remember and grieve over most vividly.

Steven Spielberg autographs, photographs and more @ ebay.com (direct link to photographs)

OSCARS:

• 1993: Best film; best director; best screenplay; best cinematography; best production design (Allan Starski); best editing (Michael Kahn); best music

• Nominations: Best actor (Neeson); best supporting actor (Fiennes); best costume design (Anna Biedrzycha-Sheppard); best make-up

  UK 2 dvd set extensively scanned and back in stock