| Night and Fog | |
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Film poster
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Directed by co-founder of French New Wave, Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog was the first major documentary about the Holocaust; it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
The title is taken from the “Nacht und Nebel” (German for “Night and Fog”) program of abductions and disappearances decreed by Nazi Germany.
The documentary features the grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek established in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps.
Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Resnais was originally hesitant about making the film until Cayrol was contracted to write the script. The two found the film very difficult to make due to its graphic nature and subject matter.
The film is composed of contemporary shots of the camps and stock footage.
French were concerned about a shot of French police officer in the film, and with the German embassy in France, which attempted to halt the film’s release at the Cannes Film Festival.
Nonetheless, Night and Fog was released–and continues to be shown–to critical acclaim
The film alternates between past and present, using historical black-and-white and newly shot color footage.
The first part shows remnants of Auschwitz while the narrator (famous actor Michel Bouquet) describes the rise of Nazi ideology.
The film continues with comparisons of the life of the Schutzstaffel to the camp’s starving prisoner. It shows the sadistic horrors inflicted upon the doomed inmates, including scientific and medical experiments, executions, and rape.
The next section, completely in black-and-white, depicts images of gas chambers and piles of bodies.
The docu’s final topic depicts the liberation of the country, the discovery of the horrors, and the question of who was responsible for them.
The music of the soundtrack was composed by Hanns Eisler.
Credits:
Directed, edited by Alain Resnais
Written by Jean Cayrol
Produced by Anatole Dauman
Narrated by Michel Bouquet
Cinematography Ghislain Cloquet, Sacha Vierny
Music by Hanns Eisler
Distributed by Argos Films
Release date: 1956
Running time: 32 minutes
