Breaking the commandments of Holocaust representation? Conflicting genre expectations in audience responses to 'Schindler's list' and 'Life is beautiful'

This essay shows how audience responses to these two films attempt to reconcile conflicting genre expectations for film, Holocaust representation, historical realism and fable. Audience responses illustrate how these films deliberately break conventions of Holocaust aesthetics to adhere to the conventions for popular film, and also how the ability for these conventions to enhance Holocaust understanding depends upon the prior historical knowledge of the viewers