Behind-The-Scenes Stories From 'Schindler's List'

Spielberg Took No Salary For Making The Movie
At the time, making a black-and-white film about the Holocaust wasn't seen as a particularly commercial idea, so the budget for Schindler's List was a relatively lean $22 million. (By contrast, Spielberg's other picture for that year, Jurassic Park, was budgeted at $60 million.)

Adding to the leanness of the Schindler budget was Spielberg's decision not to take a salary for directing the movie. He felt that payment for telling such a story would amount to "blood money":

Let's call it what it is. I didn't take a single dollar from the profits I received from Schindler's List because I did consider it blood money. When I first decided to make Schindler's List I said, if this movie makes any profit, it can't go to me or my family, it has to go out into the world...

Spielberg Warned The ‘Girl In Red’ Not To Watch The Movie Until She Turned 18
One of the film's most haunting scenes involves the little girl in a red coat, whom Schindler sees wandering around while the Krakow ghetto is being liquidated. Although the girl functions narratively as a trigger for Schindler to find his conscience and begin protecting other Jews, Spielberg noted that to him, the girl represents the way the Holocaust was happening in full view of the world, yet little was done to stop it. (Granted, there was a war on, but historians continue to debate the extent to which the Allies could have done more militarily to disrupt the functioning of the death camps.)

The girl was played by Oliwia Dabrowska, who was 3 years old at the time. Spielberg made her promise not to watch Schindler's List until she turned 18. But Dabrowska did not keep this promise, instead watching the movie for the first time at 11. She later admitted this was a mistake: it was more than she could handle at that age, and she found it difficult to process emotionally.

"I was ashamed of being in the movie and really angry with my mother and father when they told anyone about my part,” she said years later. “I kept it secret for a long, long time, though at high school people got to know on the internet."

Watching the film at 18, Dabrowska said she realized “Spielberg was right: I had to grow up into the film.”

Read on: [ranker.com]