It is all so monstrous as to be indescribable.
The sight of the starved, broken bodies, the ghastly scenes taken in the medical labs in the death camps, the sight of little children being led by the hand to their last train ride. It was a business decision, coolly and scientifically calculated, to destroy millions of innocents while reaping a profit from them- in death as well as in life. It has to be seen, if only as a reminder of what can happen when an inhuman world-view is fused to state-of-the-art technology." The Holocaust was far more (and worse) than simple mass-killing, awful as that is. It was so difficult for me to sit through that I was tempted to shut the DVD player off three times, but I told myself, "No, this is important. It was thirty harrowing minutes of a sight-seeing tour of hell. But I was just totally unprepared for this. I consider myself to have a fairly strong stomach- I've seen the results of traffic accidents and violent crimes, and like anyone else I have seen (via the TV) the horrors of war. As we witness the conscious distortion of the past still going on today, we are left numb. Unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility is depicted in brief scenes of the Nuremberg Trials. The film only lasts a short time, but the images remain indelible. 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. We are shown scenes shot after liberation that are so shocking that they have never been made public outside of this film.
We are in Auschwitz and the prisoners are arriving. The scene then abruptly shifts to wartime. The film opens in 1955 with an image of a barren field of grass with lush romantic music in the background.
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. 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. Another purpose is to show the ultimate failure of the Nazis at Nuremburg to take responsibility for it.
NIGHT AND FOG FULL
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. Written by Jean Cayrol, a holocaust survivor, and poetically narrated by Michel Bouquet, its gruesome images seem like a surreal nightmare. 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. Though the film is only thirty minutes in length, it is devastating in its impact so approach with caution. 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.
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