Night and Fog (1955)

Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard)
Directed by Alain Resnais
Written by Jean Cayrol
1955/France
Argos Films
Repeat viewing/Hulu
#305 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Récitant/Narrator: With our sincere gaze we survey these ruins, as if the old monster lay crushed forever beneath the rubble. We pretend to take up hope again as the image recedes into the past, as if we were cured once and for all of the scourge of the camps. We pretend it happened all at once, at a given time and place. We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us and a deaf ear to humanity’s never-ending cry.[/box]

This is almost poetic in its sadness and very hard to watch.

The film contrasts banal color images of contemporary deserted concentration camps with highly graphic black-and-white still images and archival footage of the suffering of Holocaust victims.

I have seen this a couple of times before.  You almost, but not quite, become desensitized to the horrific pictures of the dead and dying.  It’s the details that killed me this time. There’s footage of a man taking an elderly lady in a wheelchair to the deportation train that I find heartbreaking in so many ways.  And all the faces.  And the poor bodies.  Too much for me.

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