It is remarkable to view Alain Resnais?s documentary ?Night and Fog? today to see find that its groundbreaking form is still groundbreaking. Also remarkable is that the film pulls no punches, and censors nothing ? at least on the DVD version. When the film was originally released, it contained a shot that had been censored in post production. The still shot showed the profile of French Gendarmes in the distance ? the French government ordered the image be blurred out. However, upon its release by the criterion collection on dvd, the image was restored to show that the Vichy government may very have been involved in the running of the camps. Nevertheless, without the subtle retouch, the film loses none of its obvious power. Resnais mixes archive footage and photography of the death camp and its goings on, with color footage of the camps as the stood at the time of filming. The camp looks more or less like it remains today, starkly haunting. The black and white archive footage is disturbing and borderline nauseating at times. While the gruesome photographic portraits of the Holocaust remain abundant and paraded as a reminder that this can happen ?never again? (something which has sadly failed entirely to catch on in reality), rarely do you see the horror in the extent that Resnais showed in 1955. Flesh, close-ups of bulldozed bodies, and decapitated bodies with their heads neatly placed in a basket in real time. It remains an oddity however to ponder what is more disturbing ? the gruesome and horrifying archive footage, or empty and colour filled footage of the abandoned death camps, with the memory of where bodies one laid piled one on the other, where humans were treated worse than most unwanted of rodents.
I mentioned the style of the documentary, and suggested that it today remains unique. It?s shot in montage, the modern footage with long slow tracking shots. A voice narrates overtop of often bizarre music ? bizarre because it often feels like it belongs to another film. Despite that, it?s impossible to imagine the film without that music to evoke its sense of ghastly eeriness. Those familiar with Resnais?s other films with recognize this characteristic style. He used it again with such effect particularly in the opening of Hiroshima Mon Amour and throughout Last Year at Marienbad.
The documentary is short ? only about 30 minutes ? but it packs in a wealth of information, delivering a gutshot lesson on man?s inhumanity to his fellow man. Resnais chose not to make this a film simply about the Jewish Holocaust, but one about the Holocaust in its entirety. This is evidenced by the final death toll given towards the end of the doc, 9 million (accounting for Jews, as well as the 5 million gypsies, homosexuals, and other minorities that made up the other half of Hitler?s final solution). It?s also interesting to note the lesson of the film. At a time when the Holocaust was still in a phase suggesting it was an anomaly, something which could never happen again because it simply wouldn?t happen again (for more on this see Jeffrey C Alexander?s paper on the historical narratives of the Holocaust ? available through most academic online hosts), Resnais warns us to be weary of where our next executioners will come from, with their faces the same as ours. Resnais recognized that the Holocaust was not simply an anomaly, but that it could happen again, and indeed seems to suggest that it would happen again. How unfortunate that that long heralded call of ?never again? has gone by the wayside, and how unfortunate that Resnais seemingly had the right idea all along.
Fantastic and hard-hitting documentary. Its detached tone only serves to highlight the harrowing nature of the source material. some frighteningly graphic stock footage.
"Night and Fog" is undeniably the most important movie ever to be produced about WWII. Free from the pretention of character development conjuring false empathy, it is dead serious as it switches back and forth from footage shot 10 years after the war when concentration camps were abandond and with archaic footage taken during that grim section of history. Lasting only 20 minutes, Resnais' film is free from blemish of commercial aspirations, focusing on facts that finds horror in reality while leaving enough space for imagination to translate the nausiating details. It is curious how some people deny the Holocaust ever existed, as in this film alone, the viewer will definitely be flooded with facts, unaltered to intentionally pull any emotional punches, but presented as they are. Film scholars avoid themselves from labeling this film as a documentary, as they do have a point, the archaic footage weren't recorded to film reality as such, but film the concentration camps as they see them. Just imagine, if it was already *that* grim from theirs, what about the inmates' perspective? This is a film that will be as poignant now, tomorrow and eternity.
Among the best shorts ever directed, Nuit et Brouillard, which is also one of the best and most cruel and direct documentaries ever conceived by mankind, remains as a jewel of classic cinema. Alain Resnais's management of the topic during such terrible, racist and merciless periods of human history perfectly combines both beauty and true horror, and sucessfully opens the mind, eyes and soul of the spectator in the most amazing and genius way I have ever witnessed along with Ron Fricke. Excellent.
Probably the most disturbing film/documentary I have ever seen. I'm still not sure how to process all the images I witnessed, but it powerful none the less. It put into perspective, for me, how we can re-examine the Holocaust through film, but we will never truly be able to capture the atrocity it was in nothing but documentary and photos.
I'm not big on Holocaust films, but this is definitive. Resnais' short poetic documentary provokes like no other film on the subject--not to be missed!
Récitant/Narrator: Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened at a certain time and in a certain place, and those who refuse to see, who do not hear the cry to the end of time.
Though the film is a little out-dated, it was still emotional and riveting. The documentary was purely for knowledge and curiosity. Nothing new will be learn from this film, but to confirm Hitler and his allies were monsters of the Germans.
Wow, we watched this in World History last year, and it is a very powerful documentary. It really makes one look back on history and learn from the past so nothing as terrible ever happens again.
It takes a very brave person to watch this documentary, which explores the great horrors of the Holocaust and the tremendous amount of suffering that a people can ever endure. It will haunt you for days after viewing it.
Powerful, short, and disturbing. Looking back over half a century later, this is a vivid primary reminder. A reel of images that capture the immensity while it was still too recent to analyze... it was something to be seen and quietly observed, the mouth was too slack-jawed to form a response. There is no way to analyze a film which simply lays bare the image and nothing more.
This is a film not merely about the concentration camps, not merely about any time or place, but inhumanity wherever and whenever it has occured.
The most disturbing, shocking, poetic documentary ever made about the holcaust. What it manages to say in half an hour speaks with more truth and power than any other film on the subject before...or since.
So so powerful I just clicked on this and thinking about it made all of the hair on my body stand on end. I think I've watched this twice since I bought it. I don't really no what to say about this except I think it should be required teaching in schools.
MCT:July 14, 2008
MCT:June 8, 2008
MCT:March 19, 2008
MCT:November 5, 2007
MCT:September 9, 2007
