Nuit et brouillard (1955)

Director:

Alain Resnais

Writer:

Jean Cayrol (writer)

Release Date:

21 October 1960 (Finland)

Genre:

Documentary | Short | History | War

Plot:

The history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.

Plot Keywords:

Concentration Camp | Nazi | Death Camp | Poland | Violence

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Michel Bouquet	...	Récitant / Narrator (uncredited)
Reinhard Heydrich	...	Himself (behind Hitler) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Heinrich Himmler	...	Himself (with Hitler) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Adolf Hitler	...	Himself (views parade) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Julius Streicher	...	Himself (makes speech) (archive footage) (uncredited)

Also Known As:

Night and Fog

Runtime:

32 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Brazil:18 | Iceland:16 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:NC-16 | Australia:M | Italy:T | Finland:K-16 | UK:15

Company:

Argos Films

Trivia:

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.

Quotes:

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.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Kristina Talking Pictures (1976)

Insanity

Alain Resnais, a distinguished cinema director, working with Jean Cayrol, produced a document for all humanity to see and reflect. The director visited some of the concentration camps in Europe, where he filmed the abandoned sites in which millions lost their lives in one of the most shameful times in the history of mankind. European Jews paid a great price for no reason at all. Hitler and his followers decided to eliminate them because they saw in them a threat and their money and their labor would fuel the war machinery they needed to win the war.

The director uses color photography to show how the camps looked in 1955, then switches to the black and white of the material from an earlier time. Mr. Resnais juxtaposes the same camps during the 1940s at the height of the WWII conflict and how the lonely and forgotten places of what the director found in 1955. Even looking at these places ten years after the end of the war, these silent witnesses of the horrors the victims experienced, acquire a surreal look.

It's impossible to fathom what went on. We look in disbelief as bulldozers dump the inert bodies of the dead into common burial places. It's hard to imagine the ordeal these innocent victims went through, even for a moment. They didn't deserve the indignity of dying the way they did at the hands of people that should have known better. No excuses will ever justify what Hitler, and his fanatics, did to eliminate a race that didn't merit their hatred.

"Night and Fog" has powerful images and it packs such power, it's hard to make sense of what one sees in this important documentary that should be seen by everyone.