Nuit et brouillard

I originally had no intention to see this movie and had no idea that it even existed until I saw it. I actually saw it in High School Economics class (of all places)because my teacher had just finished showing it to his world history class and instead of wanting to hear him drone on about the GDP and recessions, we smooth talked him into showing us what was in his VCR. We had no idea what we were about to see.

This movie is probably the best holocaust documentary ever made. The images of piles of human hair, emaciated skeletons being pushed around by bulldozers, lampshades of human skin, men looking like corpses walking around, has never left me. The opera and classical music in the background helps to further add to the shock value of this film.

After about 10 minutes, kids in my class told my teacher we didn't want to watch this movie anymore. We stopped it and there was still 30 minutes left in class. We didn't learn anything about economics that day, we talked about the holocaust instead.

Alain Resnais' overwhelming short piece on the horrors of the holocaust pretty much had me shaking by the end of the film. All of the footage- even the color footage viewing into the emptiness of the camps- brings the audience to feel a mass of emotions. More than anything, however, the narration is what hits the nail on the head. While it's only half an hour long, rather brief compared to it's dramatized contemporaries like Schindler's List and The Pianist, or the massive documentaries like Sorrow and the Pity or Shoa, I'd think that it should be required viewing for any mature minded person (not for children, it's too disturbing from my perspective) interested in truly comprehending what was really going on in those god-awful years in Europe. A+

Resnais intersperses then-current-day (1955) color footage of Auschwitz with archival B&W to demystify and provide context for the Holocaust in modern western society rather than in anything unique to the German experience of totalitarianism. Photos of concentration camp personnel at home with their families invite the viewer to reflect on the banality of evil. Construction of the camps is described as like that of any large project, requiring bids, architects, contracts. Heart-wrenching scenes document a prisoner's view, from the transports being loaded through selections, showers/gas chambers, existence in the barracks, and in the end, mass death.

Included on the DVD is an excerpt from a 1994 radio interview with Resnais, wherein he mentions French censors required the film makers to obscure the hat of a policeman guarding prisoners being deported - the French government refused to permit this recognition of French complicity and assistance with the deportations.

Called the "greatest film of all time" by director Francois Truffaut, the documentary Night and Fog by Alain Resnais shows the holocaust tragedy in all its horror. Though the film is only thirty minutes in length, it is devastating in its impact so approach with caution. Night and Fog refers to the arrival of prisoners in Auschwitz under the cover of darkness and also the ultimate failure of the Nazis at Nuremberg to take responsibility for it. Written by Jean Cayrol, a holocaust survivor, and poetically narrated by Michel Bouquet, its gruesome images seem like a surreal nightmare. The purpose of the 30-minute documentary is to document for future generations what actually took place in the camps since this was a time when officialdom was reluctant to talk about what happened and the full extent of the horror was not generally known.

Another purpose is to show the ultimate failure of the Nazis at Nuremburg to take responsibility for it. It would have been welcome to also depict the complicity of others: big business, the other victims of the Nazi's, similar atrocities such as the My Lai massacre, ethnic cleansing, genocide, state violence and so forth but this was not possible given the length of the film and its purpose. Today, when there is so much holocaust denial, people need to be reminded not that the Nazis were demons but of the consequences of unchecked state power without an ethical base.

The film opens in 1955 with an image of a barren field of grass with lush romantic music in the background. The scene then abruptly shifts to wartime. We are in Auschwitz and the prisoners are arriving. We are shown scenes shot after liberation that are so shocking that they have never been made public outside of this film. Resnais does not spare us: the hair shaved off the heads of women piled high on the floor, bodies -- men -women - children -- are tossed in a garbage pit like so much rubbish, their fat used to make soap. The film only lasts a short time, but the images remain indelible. Unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility is depicted in brief scenes of the Nuremberg Trials. As we witness the conscious distortion of the past still going on today, we are left numb.

This movie is the greatest Holocaust film ever, and few will ever deny this fact. Beautiful and intense, its makes the stomach turn when one sees the footage and pictures obtained in this film. I've never seen footage this brutal in my entire life, not even in a movie. The voice-overs seem odd at place, but it is really the voice of history, speaking of unspeakable horrors which are captured almost perfectly in this film. A dark tribute to those who lost their lives in the concentration camps. This should be used as a teaching tool for tolerance and the atrocities of World War II.