Night and Fog (1956)

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

Director:

Alain Resnais

Writer:

Jean Cayrol (commentary)

Stars:

Michel Bouquet, Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler

2 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Uncredited cast:
Michel Bouquet	...	Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Reinhard Heydrich	...	Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
Heinrich Himmler	...	Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
Adolf Hitler	...	Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)
Julius Streicher	...	Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)

Storyline

One of the most vivid depictions of the horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps. Filmed in 1955 at several concentration camps in Poland, the film combines new color and black and white footage with black and white newsreels, footage shot by the victorious allies, and stills, to tell the story not only of the camps, but to portray the horror of man's brutal inhumanity.

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Plot Keywords:

nazi | concentration camp | jew | europe | death camp | 

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Genres:

Documentary | Short | History | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French

Release Date:

January 1956 (France)

Also Known As:

Night and Fog

Filming Locations:

Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Malopolskie, Poland

Company Credits

Production Co:

Argos Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

32 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

One of the first documentaries to openly deal with the Holocaust.

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Goofs

In the film a popular myth about the Third Reich is presented as fact: The claim that the body fat of prisoners in extermination camps was used to produce soap. Though evidence does exist of small-scale soap production, possibly experimental, in the camp at Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig/Gdansk, mainstream scholars of the Holocaust consider the idea that the Nazis manufactured soap on an industrial scale to be part of World War II folklore.

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Quotes

Récitant/Narrator: Grass flourishes on the inspection ground around the blocks. An abandoned village, still heavy with peril. The crematoria are no longer used. The Nazi's cunning is but child's play today. Nine million dead haunt this countryside.

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Alternate Versions

Before its original release, there was a still of a French gendarme (policeman) watching a roundup at Pithiviers. He is easily recognizable by the characteristic French "kepi." Wanting to deny complicity, French censors insisted this shot not be allowed, so for its original release, the image was altered so that a wooden beam covered the gendarme and his kepi. In 1997 or 98, the original version of the film was re-released in France, finally revealing the gendarme. The original American release of the film did not translate all the dialogue for the subtitles, in particular leaving out one of the two references to Jews: "Annette, from Bordeaux." Subsequent releases restored the original text: "Annette, a Jew from Bordeaux."

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Connections

Featured in The Michael Nyman Songbook (1992)

User Reviews

Words cannot express the power of this film.

I had heard the phrase "Night and Fog", but had missed the true meaning of it until I saw this movie sitting on a shelf in a local video store. I rented it and watched.

I don't possess a vocabulary to convey the impact the images had upon me. I sat unmmoving, sick to my stomach. Those images would not leave my head.

As a student of history, I had seen still images and brief clips of the victims of the Holocaust. None of it compared to seeing these images moving across my screen.

To any doubters of the Holocaust, I say, "Watch this film!" It did happen. This is the result of hatred and complacency. We like to think it couldn't happen here, until we remember the treatment of the Native Americans and the slaves brought to this country. We think it could never happen again, until Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc., showed it still does.