In the DVD re-release, there is a subtle but controversial difference in one of the still photographs of a Nazi concentration camp in southern France. In this version the distinctive profile of a French gendarme can be seen at one of the camps, implying that the French Vichy government of the time was aware of and perhaps involved in the management of the camps. This same photograph appears in the original version but the gendarme's profile was obscured at the insistence of the French government (who commissioned the film) when the film was in post-production.
The then Federal German government intervened successfully to prevent the film being shown at the Cannes Film Festival on the grounds that the festival's regulations prevented any film being shown that would cause offense to any participating nation. Ironically, the director of the Berlin Film Festival lobbied hard for the film to be shown at his festival.
While it was thought that Alain Resnais was reluctant to take on a Holocaust documentary, when interviewed in 1992 he said that the film is supposed to serve as an allegory for the French intervention in Algeria which occurred at the time of the film's release. Therefore, it make sense that he would use the word "deporte" instead of "Jew." He was trying to make an anti-genocide statement in general and to use the word "Jew" would have taken away from his larger message. That is also why he chose to use the figure of 9 million killed, including not only the 6 million Jews but also the 3 million others that were killed under the Nazi regime.
One of the first documentaries to openly deal with the Holocaust.
The title refers to a strategy instigated by Himmler in December 1941 that helped propagate the fear of the Third Reich. Anyone caught resisting the Nazi occupiers would be arrested and then immediately whisked off to the camps in such a way that they would vanish without a trace, "into the night and fog."