Claude Lanzmann’s The Four Sisters (2017) on Television

Abstract

This article analyses Claude Lanzmann’s final work, The Four Sisters (2017), in the context of its being edited from the outtakes of Shoah (1985) for broadcast on the Arte television channel. It argues that the distinctive features of the film, including its form as a quartet of self-contained interviews, absence of location footage and reliance on certain kinds of shot construction and mise-en-scene, arise from this televisual production context, as well as seeming to mark an ambivalent effort on the director’s part to redress his earlier work’s focus on male testifiers.