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Seeing "Shoah," Claude Lanzmann's 9 1/2-hour Holocaust documentary, in a movie theater was difficult for many because of both the length and the subject matter.
On videocassette, it may find acceptance in the rental market. Paramount released the five-cassette set last week, and at $300 a set the sales market will be limited.
Lanzmann said he knows of many people who have seen part of "Shoah" but not all of it. "I discovered that a lot of people had seen the second half but not the first half," he said. "I also found out from these people that it doesn't lose its impact when you see parts of it or if you see the parts out of order."
A series of interviews with people who were in and around the Nazi extermination centers, "Shoah" doesn't lose anything in the move to home video. "It's mainly a lot of faces," Lanzmann said. "They are as expressive on a TV screen as they are in the big screen in the theaters."
As Lanzmann acknowledged, you have to be in the mood to see "Shoah." On videocassette, you can see part of it anytime. "It's a difficult, sometimes painful subject," he said. "It's best to deal with it when you can handle it. You might want to see some of it at 1 in the morning. So then you just pull out a cassette."
Though Lanzmann shot 350 hours of film for this project, he didn't add any of the extra footage to the video version. "I can make other films with that material," he said. "I may do something with it that's just for the video market."
This was an expensive project that was a financial drain on Lanzmann. So far, it has not been profitable. "With a film this long you can't show it as many times in a day in a theater," he said. "People won't come to see it because of the length and the subject. You can't expect it to bring in much money. But I didn't make it to make money. I made...