Schindler's List
"Schindler's List" was very well received by many of Spielberg's peers. Filmmaker Billy Wilder wrote to Spielberg saying, "They couldn't have gotten a better man. This movie is absolutely perfection." Polanski, who turned down the chance to direct the film, later commented, "I certainly wouldn't have done as good a job as Spielberg because I couldn't have been as objective as he was." He cited "Schindler's List" as an influence on his 1995 film "Death and the Maiden". The success of "Schindler's List" led filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to abandon his own Holocaust project, "Aryan Papers", which would have been about a Jewish boy and his aunt who survive the war by sneaking through Poland while pretending to be Catholic. According to scriptwriter Frederic Raphael, when he suggested to Kubrick that "Schindler's List" was a good representation of the Holocaust, Kubrick commented, "Think that's about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn't it? The Holocaust is about 6 million people who get killed. "Schindler's List" is about 600 who don't."