The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 35

iCOLO Wsdneidsy, December 1 3, 1993 B-l 7Ai nm "jin American in Paris," starring Cssj one of 25 films QB8 21,7 1 "Home rnprwment" ABC 20,1 fSMT NBC 199 CBS 166 I. "Mondty Hfi Footed: Dtlw-rHidttpfts" ABC 16.0 Under Rw" ABC 17.7 ABC 174 rCC 16.6 1 "12 KtoetFeednetnQ People oH993" ABC 16.3 ABC 16.2 added this year to the National Film Registryatthe Library of Congnss.lB-4 For Hit wdng Dm. 12 Mooring to Aft Metal Co. pniru I7N TN 'Schindler's List' tells the story of a man who brought hope out of the Nazi night By Scott Rosenberg iXAMMRMOVKCnmC If you think of the opening of "Schindler's List" in that light, the candle brings to mind the famous, eulogy Adlai Stevenson offered for Eleanor Roosevelt: "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness." Somehow Schindler found it in himself to kindle a small light at a time when the darkness was everywhere and in a place where matches were few. HE VERY first image to appear on the screen of "Schindler's List" is a hand lighting a candle.

For a brief in ft Light is precious in the nightmare world of "Schindler's list," which is mostly set in or near Krakow, in Nazi-occupied Poland. The film traces the gradual ing of hope among this region's Jewish population from the bureaucratic indignities of the first days of the occupation, to the establishment of a cramped ghetto, to the emptying of the ghetto into forced-labor camps, to the emptying of the work camps into the extermination centers. Amid this general calamity, one small, specific group of Jews, separated from the flood of victims by provident chance, finds a savior. To their amazement, the Nazi who owns the pot and pan factory they work in keeps rescuing them from the death machine. As it gets more saves one life saves the world entire" reflecting upon the deed the film records: the unlikely, persistent and ultimately successful efforts of a Nazi businessman named Oskar Schindler to rescue his employees, 1,100 Jews, from the exterminating maelstrom that would swallow 6 million others.

Placing those two numbers side by side, it is perhaps more natural to despair than to be roused to action. The enormity of the disaster, and the relative modesty of Schindler's benefaction, gives immediate pause. The concept of a "good German" someone who worked among atrocities with a sane human being's full awareness of their atrociouBness is fraught with paradox: How could one be content saving so few, knowing so many were doomed? How, on the other hand, could one not save as many as one could manage? moment the only one in Steven Spielberg's three-hour chronicle of the Holocaust the picture is aglow with color. Then the screen, like the story it is about to record, fades to monochrome sometimes murkily gray, sometimes marked by extreme contrasts of Hght and darkness. It is a Shabbat candle, we eventually learn, lit by the hand of a rabbi in a most improbable place a German-owned factory in Central Europe during the bleakest days of the Second World War.

The epigraph to "Schindler's List" is a Talmudic saying "Whoever Movie Review CAST Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph riennes DIRECTOR Steven Spiefeerg WRITER Steven Zaian RATED THEATER Kabuki 8 EVALUATION V4 See SCHINDLER, B-4 EAMMncHlHinKCulwirl hlhtf fMMrtal tt secure tn rofe ofLancSme spokeswoman and actress. ladylike Lovely, IllllS i r'H I Yv but wild at heart Many-faced Isabella Rossellini an enigma By Cynthia Robins Or 1WEXAMMER STAFF Rossellini was born to the characters of scandal. For the (then) shocking affair with director Rossellini, the radiant Bergman, Hollywood's golden star, was drummed out of the film community and exiled to Europe for many years. Isabella's own romantic history has been, well, interesting. She was married to Italian-American auteur director Martin Scorcese and carried on a lengthly, high-profile affair with auteur director David Lynch, who cast her as an abused wife (photographed naked and bat- See ROSSELLINI, B7) OtkaT ScMafltf (Um Nets), hands outstretched "welcomes" Jewish slave laborers to his factory in Steven Spielberg's epic film of the Holocaust IF THE career of Isabella Rossellini has been anything, it is anachronistic and hard to define.

For 12 years, her placid, genteel, soft and lovely face, accented by large, sensuous lips and a direct, clear-eyed gaze, has represented Lancdme skin care, cosmetics and fragrance. And for nine of those 12 years, the owner of that visage has also acted in some of the most original, avant-garde and outrageous films ever made. As the daughter of Swedish-born actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian auteur film director Roberto Rossellini, Rossellini came by her beauty and talent the easy way: She was born with good genes. But it has been her quiet determination that has built a career out of being relaxed, ladylike and lovely for Lancome and literally wild at heart for film. The dichotomy may show up in the product, Le.

the ads and the films, but as for the woman herself, she remains a carefully schooled enigma who is loath to talk about her private life. 'NutcrackeSfl Christmas classic This year it's a little weak in some areas By Philip El wood EXAMMEH STAFF CHT1C ACT's "Christmas Car- on the boards week and the San er Lew's wife) as the Sugar Plum Fairy. The work, with extensive refurbishing and realignment over the years especially by Helgi To-masson, current artistic director of the troupe has grown to be a holiday season mainstay here and across the land. Although on Tuesday I found more portions of the performance than I had anticipated less than satisfying, I could hardly say it wasnt a magical, colorful evening of music, dance and theater. From Clara Stahlbaum's gay and colorful Christmas party, where toymaker Herr Drosselmey-er brings his Nutcracker carving, to the Grand Pat de Deux danced by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier (Evelyn Cisneros, Anthony Randazzo) and the subsequent departure from her land of dreams by Clara (Emily Hagenfaier) and her "Nutcracker Prince," (Tai Steele-Pfleger), the performance (two hours, 45 minutes) is festive and fun.

The staging often overdone, See NUTCRACKER, Efy For press consumption, Rossellini is very dignified. She is in San Francisco briefly with Lancdme's president and two New York reps, making a public appearance for Macy'a new L' Atelier Lancome makeup studio and, of course, to promote Tresor, the signature fragrance which she helped choose and for which she designed the packaging Ws meet for an 8 a.m. breakfast in an elegantly appointed suite at her hotel This is her third break-Cut, she says, ignoring a plate of fruit and some muffins. Occasionally she will snatch a fresh raspberry or a grape and pop it in her mouth a fulL luscious pout painted subtly with garnet matte lip liner. Everything else about Rossellini is subtle, from her downplayed inaluup to her Romeo Gigli pin stripes, white silk man-tailored shirt, short-cropped hair and crepe-eoled tie-shoes, One of a pair of twi Isabella y.

txMmcntamMOf Francisco Ballet's "Nutcracker" production opening on Tuesday, it's two down and one to go in what has become The City's performing arte community's traditional three-part tribute to the Christinas season. Handel's "Messiah," as presented by the San Francisco Symphony (opening Wednesday) will keep the year-end musical circle unbroken. Tuesday night before a festive, elegantly -dressed and appreciative audience, the Ballet's "Nutcracker" was dazzling, brilliant and colorful, ornately costumed, sometimes awkwardly danced yet, a quite lovely way to spend a pre-Christmas evening. The Ballet's Willam Christen-sen mounted the first complete American production of the Nut-cracker in 1944, with Giadla Cacd-alanza Cristensen (Willam's broth (MM Rodolphe Cassand and KatA Waldo in the San Francisco BaUeQt "Nutcracker. sw mm wvm.