Actor(s): Michel Bouquet, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, Julius Streicher
Director(s): Alain Resnais
Publisher: Criterion
Binding: DVD
Brand: RESNAIS,ALAIN
Language(s): English, French
EAN: 9780780026940
ISBN: 0780026942
Studio: Criterion
Movie Description
Though only a short subject, this groundbreaking documentary remains one of the most influential and powerful explorations of the Holocaust ever made. Director Alain Resnais bluntly presents an indictment not only of the Nazis but of the world community, and the film is all the more remarkable for its harsh judgment considering the time in which it was made, less than a decade after the end of the war, when questions of responsibility were not yet being addressed. Juxtaposing archival clips from the concentration camps across Germany and Poland with the present-day denials of the camps' existence, the film seeks to once and for all expose the horrifying truth of the Final Solution, as well as to address the continuing anti-Semitism and bigotry that existed long after the war's end. An invaluable resource and testament to history, this film was a profound influence on all films to address issues of the Holocaust, from Judgment at Nuremberg and Shoah to Schindler's List. Night and Fog remains an essential and indispensable document of the 20th century. --Robert Lane
Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust, Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage. With Night and Fog, Resnais investigates the cyclical nature of man's violence toward man and presents the unsettling suggestion that such horrors could come again.
This documentary was made in the 1950s and is both simple and confronting. It is not political or apologetic nor is it for the faint hearted as it deals with the reality of the deportations, the camps and the genocide. It is a must see for anyone interested in historical reality rather than the Hollywood retellings of this awful time
"One of the Best Films I've Ever Seen"
Written By: Joshua Miller
Legendary French director Francois Truffaut called this 31-minute documentary "the greatest film ever made." A bold statement coming from a director whose films are much more likely to be mentioned in conversations about the greatest films ever made. I expected Night and Fog to be a short, simple documentary about the horrors of the Holocaust. I figured it would be a good film, but nothing prepared me for what I watched. Director Alain Resnais creates something in a 30-minute documentary that few directors could achieve with a 2-hour documentary or even a 2-hour fictional film.
The film mixes color footage of deserted concentration camps (specifically Auschwitz and Majdanek) with archival black & white WWII footage. There's a remarkable fluidity to the editing of the film, with a haunting portrait of Holocaust victims emerging from the war footage, color footage, and the poetic narration. The narration describes the daily grind of life at a concentration camp in a poetic, yet hard-hitting manner. All the while, the images on the screen slowly progress from simply haunting (people being loaded onto train cars, with the camera sometimes lingering on a face of one of the people being sent to their death) to the downright horrifying (dead prisoners strewn across a yard or stacked in a pile). Resnais never shies away from showing images of the most grotesque sort, but it's never exploitive...Hardly a frame of this film contains an image I'm likely to forget anytime soon.
Night and Fog is a powerful experience, arguably more of an experience than just a film. Few films have evoked such an intense emotional reaction from me or left me as devastated. There are moments in this film of true, understated beauty (the color footage is beautiful, but with a menacing undertone) balanced with moments of horror and depravity. Even worse is that all the black and white footage is real.
No film I've seen has illustrated and enlightened me to the horrors of this time and place in such a profound and poignant manner the way Night and Fog has. I must say that if this film doesn't affect you on an emotional level you may want to confirm that you have a pulse. Night and Fog is not a pleasant film to watch, but it is an essential one. Few films deserve the term "masterpiece" applied to it as much as this one.
GRADE: A
"Night and Fog"
Written By: Jim Gerdy
Night and Fog is an excellent potent film by Alain Rensais. Named "Nuit et Brouillard" in the original, the title derives from "Nacht und Nabel", a particular terror campaign by Hitler's High Command against political dissidents, one of many paths to disappearing in a Nazi camp.
The film is a short work, about thirty minutes, documenting the Holocaust or Shoah, the industrialized human cleansing perpetrated by the Germans in WWII. As a work of film it stands out in this genre for giving a very complete picture of the phenomenon through a masterful mix of Nazi footage, other WWII footage, and cinematography of the ruins of the infamous camps. They were uncommemorated ruins as the film was made in 1955. That is ten years after the Allied "liberation" and years before more widespread efforts in the west to analyze what happened.
Director Resnais presentation is blunt and brutal. He himself was tormented by what his preparatory research revealed and the viewer will likely be too. This Criterion Collection re-release from 2003 also removed editing that the French producers imposed originally.
Beyond its value as cinema this is an important historical document. It illustrates both the camp ruins and the vantage point from a particular internecine time, in between the surrender and destruction of the Nazis and the later full fledged cold war between the remaining powers (US and USSR). That is these camps and their mode of operation seemed to lay dormant for a while for Rensais to photograph them and speculate cynically on their nature.
Ironically, or perhaps fatefully, we can now see that the superseding powers have absorbed much of the atrocity that this film documents. Camps on the USSR side of the world, those that materially survived the war, were reused for much the same purpose as they were originally build for, as Soviet prison camps. And then on the Western side the evolution is a bit more subtle as the structures have either been demolished and built over or turned into museums. Yet at last shadowy camps such as Guantanamo Bay and unrevealed others illustrate a basic universality in the atrocities he shows us.
"Intensely moving documentary"
Written By: Tristan
Night and Fog depicts the holocaust only ten years after the fact, while it is still fresh in everyone's memory. The film shows the locations of where the camps used to be and then juxtaposes the same locations using the available archive footage just to show how much these places have truly changed. The film also shows pictures and videos of the camps from behind the doors that were even closed from the victims in order to show what sort of sub-human behavior was going on while the people on the outside were under the control of a madman.
The effect of these images are nothing short of shocking and mindblowing. It is remarkable to see how different the locations are and how much has changed in such a short amount of time. At the same time it is incredibly disturbing to note how nobody seems to have the ability to keep such a ghastly event in their minds for very long, and it is upsetting to think about and to realize. This film dares to confront these feelings, and it does it in a way that is as quietly effective as any film I have seen. I think that it is very important for more filmmakers to craft films such as this, if only to allow people to have an easier way of confronting their own feelings toward such a remarkable tragedy and Night and Fog demonstrates the importance of this idea in an accessible and truthful way.
I think what struck me the most about this film is it's technique in this examination. This film uses some of the most effective editing I have seen. The effect the film has of flashing back and forth between the same location ten years earlier is what really struck me as brilliant, and I can see how many filmmakers could use this as inspiration in the technique of comparative purpose and of similarity of events. What works especially well is how the film draws such a solid statement from a simple conclusion, but it brings it out of such a complicated and horrific part of human history. The film does not go for the political or religious aspects of the events of the holocaust like many one-sided people do. Instead it challenges itself in showing humanity and human life at it's most fragile and it's most damaged.
One thing to note about the documentary is that it goes for a completely unbiased and open minded perspective. The narration plays an important part in allowing the film a much more open narrative. Narrator Michel Bouquet speaks in a dry, neutral, wooden, and cold way as to allow the film a more passive feel to the material to allow the viewer to view the images for what they are rather than what the filmmaker wants you to think of them. The music score only helps to enhance this effect. The music wavers back and forth between tragic and melancholy and light and whimsical. Many may view this choice as a somewhat surrealistic attempt at chaotic filmmaking, but I see it as a very brave choice that only adds to the power of the film and to the power of it's historical roots and it's effect. It's a must-see!
"Chilling but necessary DVD that everyone should watch"
Written By: Kathleen
I first saw this film in a religion/philosophy class when I was 17 and a senior in high school. I'm now 53 and it has and will remain in my memory forever. The crimes against humanity that the Nazis committed were vile, shocking and the work of sadists whose emotional lives had been warped beyond the belief of most people. I had been told that this film was actually the intentional work of Nazi soldiers and confiscated by the Allied soldiers who liberated the camps. The description above says differently, but truly, I do feel had to have been work tht the Nazis were resonsible for as who else could calmly film such horrendous atrocities?
