Available on DVD: “A Film Unfinished”

Even the most harrowing drama is still, at its core, a form of entertainment — a way to pass the time. But A Film Unfinished shows that the medium can be used for more nefarious purposes, as a tool of propaganda, even a weapon in war.

Yael Hersonski’s documentary is infuriating, heartbreaking, devastating — and scary. It depicts a lie upon a lie. The manipulation and perversion of a form of popular culture with such casual indifference to human life is appalling.

In 1942, shortly before most residents of the Warsaw Ghetto were shipped off to Treblinka, Nazis sent cameramen into the ghetto to record daily life there for a propaganda film, Das Ghetto. It never was finished. The footage, four reels discovered by East Germans after the war, was studied for years. It shows wealthy Jews living happily as well as unspeakable suffering among the poor.

Why the film was shot isn’t known. It seems most likely that it would have shown that some Jews living in the ghetto were comfortable and had no regard for those who were less fortunate. Customers walk into a shop, ignoring the children begging outside its window. An elaborate funeral procession moves through the streets to a cemetery. Well-dressed people walk past a man lying dead on the sidewalk, not even looking at him, as if he weren’t even there.

However, a fifth reel of footage was discovered in 1998, and it is shattering. A series of outtakes, it shows that the scenes of affluence — nice dinners in restaurants, visiting with friends in a comfortable apartment — were staged. The boorish behavior often was conducted at gunpoint, under orders by uniformed soldiers, as the cameras rolled. Occasionally, a cameraman is caught on film. There are several takes of the customers ignoring the beggars, of the passers-by being marched past the dead man, again and again. The funeral procession is perhaps the most obscene depiction of all; the lost footage shows the reality of how the dead were disposed of — slid down boards into mass graves.

Hersonski showed the footage to five survivors of the ghetto and filmed their reaction to it. Their memories, both shared and witnessed, are profoundly moving. It’s sad, certainly, to see them relieve the horror, but it’s devastating to hear, as one woman says, that she’s happy that she can cry “now that I’m human.”

To say that the film is uncomfortable to watch is an understatement. It’s searing. Yet it’s also invaluable, not just as a further reminder of Nazi atrocities but also as a cautionary look at how anything we see can be manipulated, perverted. It is difficult to watch when Hersonski slows the footage, lingering over the haunted eyes set in gaunt faces. It’s worse to see those who avert their gaze, unable to look into the Nazis’ cameras, utterly defeated, as if their fate, which will overtake them in a few months, is known to them already.