Gillo Pontecorvo's Academy Award-nominated "Kapò" tells the story of a young Jewish woman sent to a concentration camp where she eventually gets put in charge of other prisoners due to her fraternization with a guard. The viewer understands that young Edith (Susan Strasberg) is so terrorized by what she experiences that her desperation drives her to align herself with the oppressors. In other prisoners' cases, they kill themselves by throwing themselves against the fence.

Obviously this movie isn't as hard-hitting as "Schindler's List", but it still bears watching as an indictment of fascist Italy's participation in Germany's extermination of anyone deemed the "wrong" kind of person (whether it was Jews, progressives, LGBTs, or someone else). I don't know whether or not Italy had made a notable movie focusing on the Holocaust prior to this, but this movie doesn't gloss over anything. There's even a scene where the prisoners are forced to march naked.

Harrowing movie, but an excellent one. I recommend it. Also starring Laurent Terzieff and Emmanuelle Riva.

"Kapò" has an unusual pedigree. It's an Italian-French co- production that was filmed in Yugoslavia! It also was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film--which it lost to Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring".

When the film begins, teenager Edith has been brought to a Nazi death camp along with her parents and many other Jews. Because she was so young, she's been separated and placed with the children-- children who are all going to be liquidated the next day. When Edith learns of this, she runs. But where can you run in a death camp?! She eventually runs into a prisoner who hides her. He also helps her establish a new identity...Nicole, a French kapo. A kapo, in case you didn't know it, was a guard chosen from among the prisoners. This guard was a career criminal or homosexual whose job it was to beat and mistreat their fellow prisoners. So, 'Nicole' was now expected to behave and act like one of these degenerates.

At first, Nicole has great difficulty. After all, she's a young girl and has a decent heart. However, over time, after lots of privation and torment, she adapts to her new role and even seems to excel at being a kapo. What's next?

Up through Edith/Nicole's transformation into a kapo, I was captivated by the film. However, although the final portion is pretty cinematic and 'nice', it also seems to be a bit of a let-down as well as being awfully unrealistic and overly sentimental. How could a person who would do ANYTHING to survive ultimately turn out to be someone who is so full of self-sacrifice? It just didn't make a lot of sense. Additionally, the film was a tad sloppy (such as the sloppy and obviously fake Nazi uniforms and the terrible use of stock footage). As a result, it's a good film but sure seems like it should have been more given its premise.

A teen Jewish girl and her family are imprisoned in a concentration camp . There, the 14-years-old girl played by Susan Strasberg finds a harsh reality and changes identities with the help of the camp medic and rises to the position of Kapo. This is a good movie about the brutal existence at concentration camps and subsequent breakout from horrible place. This excellent movie deals about extermination center, abuse of camp guards or Kapos who enjoy their power, prisoners committing suicide and the subsequent getaway led by Laurent Terzieff and Russian prisoners . We see the horrors,murders,massacres against the prisoners and Nazis personify evil . Thus , when the incoming transports ,mostly Jews, SS soldiers made instant decisions,those who were fit to labors were sent into the camp, others including the children ,were dispatched immediately to the gas chambers.Finally the inmates broke out in a desperate riot that I believe it can be the concentration camp of Sorbibor, only in which Russian prisoners achieved to escape . The picture reflects perfectly the atrocities as a by-product of sheer Nazi evil . The flick is powered by splendid performances , as Susan Strasberg, -daughter of Lee Strasberg, creator of Actors studio- as suffering starring and Laurent Terzieff is watchable as obstinate Russian soldier wishing freedom. Appears as secondary actor playing a Nazi soldier Gianni Garco or John Garco, future Spaghetti Western hero named Sartana . Shot in magnificent black and white by Sekulovic and Carlo De Palma , Woody Allen's usual cameraman . Sensitive and atmospheric score by Carlo Rustichelli. The film achieved an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign movie but lost to the ¨Virgin Spring ¨. This extraordinary and unknown film by one of the pioneers of political film , he always interesting director Gillo Pontecorvo. It was one of the first films about the theme of Jewish holocaust and one of the more realistic in its recreation . Gillo subsequently will directed ¨Battle of Argel¨ and ¨Queimada¨.

The picture is based on real events and survivor's memories,these are the following : The large death camps were transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference (1942). There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates (as happen with the starring's family) . Victims (as Susan Strasberg and her parents) were brought to the camp in unventilated transports, and all but a handful were gassed after arrival,the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time using Zyclon B which was a crystallized prussic acid which dropped into death chamber ,most of their corpses were burned in open pits (as occurs at the ending of the movie when is opened a large hole to bury unfortunates).