Tools of Characterization
Characterization in Schindler's List
Physical Appearances
No mistaking those Nazis. Say what you want about their murderous lunatic ways, but they knew how to dress—neatly pressed uniforms, cleanly scrubbed faces, boots polished to a mirror gloss. After a hard night of liquidating a ghetto or loading corpses onto a truck, they might look a little haggard, but they're generally pretty well spruced up.
The Jews, on the other hand, go from nice clothing to rags and tattered scarves. Their faces become gaunt, their bodies emaciated, and at one point some of them are literally marched around naked. In case you still don't recognize them on sight, there's the yellow star on the jacket or armband. Just so everybody knows who's who.
The exception to all of this is Oskar Schindler, who remains out of uniform and sharply dressed at all times. The camera lingers on his roomful of expensive clothes as he carefully selects what to wear to his parties. The man knows how to make an impression. He even wears a swastika lapel pin for almost the entire film, and Spielberg always makes sure we can see it on him.
But Oskar's the one guy whose clothing and appearance stands diametrically opposed to who he really is. Looking every inch the charming, Nazi-sympathizing, wealthy German businessman and womanizer, he's a sheep in wolf's clothing. There's a human heart beating under that expensive suit jacket.
Actions
When the Jews act, they do so out of self-defense, or in a desperate effort to save other Jews from the ovens. They're often terrified and sometimes despairing, but many are prepared to think on their feet. The Nazis, on the other hand are all cruelty and bullying: laughing as they shoot their captors in the head or even just passively firing sniper rifles at the workers the same way they might light a cigarette.
Schindler, for his part, is always the wheeler-dealer, talking to people with broad magnanimous gestures and smiling to set them at ease. Watch him put the moves on the Nazis in the opening scene at the nightclub, for instance. Or how he smiles at Goeth when asking for "his people" to be turned over to him instead of being sent to Auschwitz.
Speech and Dialogue
Spielberg's actors do such an amazing job of inhabiting their characters that you don't even need dialogue. Neeson plays Schindler as a powerful charmer; just watching him work a room you can guess what he's about. Ditto Goeth—Fiennes seems to convey more with his eyes than most actors can do with pages of dialogue. Kingsley's Stern exudes calm and a quiet determination, but you can tell he's terrified inside. The Jews crouch in terror of the next beating or shooting.
Still, it's not a silent movie, and the dialogue supports what we gather from the demeanor of the actors. Goeth is chilling in how detached and bored he seems every time he opens his mouth. He treats the horrors and murder he unleashes as a dull task to be completed, and his speech reflects that.
Schindler, on the other hand, is smooth as silk, talking up people to lower their defenses and acting like he's everyone's best friend. He's preoccupied with money in his early conversations with Stern. His speech is intense, almost hypnotic at times. As the film progresses, that same intensity gets transferred to his attempts to purchase Jews to save them from deportation to Auschwitz.
The Jews, for whom things go from bad to worse to nightmarish throughout the film, don't have a large share of the dialogue because they really have no voice—that is, no say in what's happening. Early in the film, they complain about their appalling treatment at the hands of the Nazis, who've taken their homes and thrown them into a crowded ghetto. As the scope of the horror dawns on them, their complaints are replaced by fearful silence and short answers to questions. Nobody wants to be noticed. Conversations take place in private among themselves.
The exception is Stern, who enters into a complicated partnership with Schindler and never quite knuckles under to the man. "Let me understand," he cocks an eyebrow at Schindler when they first meet. "They put up all the money and I'd do all the work. What, if you don't mind my asking, would you do?" Their frank conversations convey their strange partnership. Stern's undeterred in leaning on Oskar to get vulnerable workers out of the camps and into the factory. He's stronger than he looks.