I first watched Night and Fog about ten years ago, and it was a haunting, powerful experience that left me shaken and moved. The one scene I most vividly remembered was the cutting from footage of a Nazi train en route to a concentration camp to a present-day tracking shot of the same train tracks overgrown with weeds and rusting from disuse. It was and is a startling visual reminder of how quickly we can forget the horrors of the past and how innocuous the road to the Holocaust can seem out of context.
Resnais filmed Night and Fog ten years after World War II ended. Rewatching Night and Fog now, that disconnect is perfectly captured in Resnais’ opening shot. The camera focuses on a picturesque, peaceful country landscape only to pan downward to reveal the barbed-wire fences that were just out of the frame. Michel Bouquet’s narration throughout highlights
the horrific dichotomy of the appearances of normal city life surrounding the concentration camps and the reality of the genocide that occurred there. In one short decade following World War II, the documentary makers already express skepticism and concern for whether such a monstrous atrocity will happen again, especially if we forget the horrors as
vegetation covers up the once muddy landscapes and the outlines of old buildings create the impression of a once functioning city life.
The horrors of how those cities functioned; however, shed a light on the human capacity for cruelty and dehumanizing the other. There’s always a juxtaposition between past horrors and present serenity suggesting that all of humanity is too comfortable with their own comfort, not looking past the veneer of a “city,” the promises of a political party, or taking any responsibility for their culpability in communal crimes.
Night and Fog, in its short thirty minutes, chronicles the entirety of World War II, from the Nazis taking power and outlawing opposing political parties in 1933 to the end of the war and the liberation of the prisoners in concentration camps in 1945. Framing the holocaust with these events highlights the communal responsibility and that the massacre did not come from nowhere. Brief photos from the Nuremberg trials are accompanied by quotes that the guards and commanders on trial deny any responsibility for the execution and abuses they committed. I think everyone knows that is nonsense. However, the film’s repeated highlighting of horror and “normalcy” as coexisting so closely together reveals that all the people turning a blind eye to the evil of the Third Reich is what enabled the Nazis to commit the atrocities they did.
Resnais does not shy away from depicting those atrocities, and the images of starved and murdered prisoners provide the greatest contrast with the peaceful landscape images of what the concentration camps looked like in 1955. The narration reminds us never to forget, especially since nature can wipe out the horrors of the past, and Night and Fog is not only a window to the past but a window to the humanity and souls of all who lost their lives in the Holocaust. — Evan Cogswell (2023)
- Directed by: Alain Resnais
- Produced by: Anatole Dauman Samy Halfon Philippe Lifchitz
- Written by: Jean Cayrol
- Music by: Hanns Eisler
- Cinematography by: Ghislain Cloquet Sacha Vierny
- Editing by: Alain Resnais
- Release Date: 1956
- Running Time: 32
- Language: French
Arts & Faith Lists:
Note: Prior to 2020, short films were excluded from eligibility in Top 100 voting.
2020 Top 100 — #20
2023 Top 25 Spirituallyl Significant Documentaries — #14