Night and Fog (Alan Resnais, 1955, France)

This is not a narrative film aboout the Holocaust and though also not a definite documentary. The Film starts with clips of disserted consertration camp in Auschwitz filmed in 1955 only ten years after the liberations of the camps. The the film switches between the present and the past of the camps, and also uses other material filmed in Germany in World War II.

Unlike other Holocoust movies does the film not utilize the emotions the viewer might have for its subject. On the other hand a narrator reads a poetic text which instead of glorifying the subject it questions and reflects on it. Remindin the viewer that no word nor no pictures can tell us the heinous acts that went on there.

Alan Resnais undertakes a enormous subject that is still fresh in the worlds mind and crams into a thirty minute film. Though it is short it gives the viewer a bitteful taste of this tragic time in history and is all as meaningful as documentaries such as Shoah (Claude Lenzmann, 1985), that is over nine hours long and full of interviews with consentration camp victims.