![]() Touching on the differences in designs of the concentration camp gates "meant to be passed through only once," the camp's ghastly semblance of city life (hospital, residential area, prison), and the in-context-Orwellian camp slogans such as "Work is Freedom" and "Cleanliness is Health," Night and Fog is so much more than simply a gruesome catalog of stills and clips (although these are some of the most disturbing in existence). Narrated by actor (uncredited) Michel Bouquet, and filmed in the deserted concentration camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek 10 years after the Allied liberation, this half-hour heartbreaker intertwines then-contemporary, nearly bucolic color footage with harrowing archival images and clips from the time that Jewish men, women, and children arrived at their final destinations on trains in the "night and fog" followed by the indignities of being shaved, numbered, and bunked three to a bed (Jean Cayrol's hauntingly poetic script refers here to the "fiercely contested blanket") and culminating, finally, in death…in the work fields, the inhumane "clinics," or the gas chambers. "War nods off to sleep, but keeps one eye always open." As absolutely devastating and relevant at the dawn of our already war-torn 21st century as it was upon its initial release in 1955, Alain Resnais's Night and Fog is not only one of the best films ever made about the Holocaust, but also one of the best documentaries ever made, period. ![]()
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