Review: Night and Fog (1955)

Alain Resnais' Night and Fog is a documentary about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, created for the sole use of torture and murder. It is not long, clocking in at a scant 32 minutes, but it says all that needs to be said: The concentration camps were horrible, and claimed the lives of millions upon millions of innocent people. Obviously, all this now is common knowledge, but Night and Fog may partly be the reason for that: It was made in 1955, a mere decade following the end of the Second World War, a time when the mass slaughter was still relatively fresh on the collective minds' of the world.

It is shot in a mix of rather striking color, given the fact it was shot in 1955, a time when black and white films were still dominating the marketplace, and black-and-white archival footage. It chronicles the "life" of a concentration camp from its conception, all the way down to what remained of them back when the film was shot. But it doesn't allow us to distance ourselves from the horror; it is too easy to dismiss these horrific events as the work of "monsters", or people filled with evil, as we often do. But it reminds us that it was humans that did this to other humans, and that, while this may be the largest and most obvious example of man's brutality to fellow man, it is unfortunately far from the only one. "A concentration camp is built the way a stadium or a hotel is built," the narrator starts, not five minutes in, "with businessmen, estimates, competitive bids, and no doubt a bribe or two." This helps put a rather chilling spin on it, something that doesn't allow us to distance ourselves from the horrors; it could have been you or I that was involved in the creation of something so unspeakable.

It's also funny (read: depressing) how time has a way of allowing us to forget. It is almost as if murder and torture have become just another way of life: It's presented in popular movies in multiplexes, allowing eager theatergoers, many of them impressionable teenagers, to watch characters die unimaginable deaths at the hands of unspeakable evil. Once the lights go on, however, or perhaps after a couple nights of discomfort and nightmares to the more sensitive viewers, the film, and the suffering, is forgotten; it's an escape from reality that isn't too far from reality itself. Film and cinema have a reputation of being "escapist" entertainment, allowing people to see things that they could not see in reality, things that did not exist. Thus, it is almost as if people feel, by watching people die such horrible deaths, they can disconnect themselves from thinking such things exist: For the two hours spent in the theater, death only exists in the movies. Murderers are only actors in front of a camera. Blood is little more than red food coloring and Karo syrup.

Though Night and Fog does feature many photos of dead bodies piled on top of each other, and a few rather chilling close-ups (including of a corpse with his eyes open so wide that it seems almost a cruel joke), they are nothing you haven't seen before in school videos. I was expecting, for whatever reason, a barrage of graphic gunshot wounds, and dismembered limbs, but they are thankfully missing. Even though the movie touches upon the indescribably gruesome medical experiments, we are thankfully spared from seeing the often-nauseating remains of said experiments; instead it is focused on the humanity (or the lack thereof, whatever the case may be): There are a few genuinely poignant moments in which family members, who are being whisked away by the Nazis, say goodbye to one another, more than likely for the last time. While movies such as Schindler's List use these moments as easy emotional fodder, it hits ten times harder seeing it in actual footage; these aren't actors, these are people.

But perhaps Night and Fog's main purpose is to serve as a rather unsubtle reminder that such evil never stays in the past. Yes, it uses the concentration camps as its focus, but as the narrator states in his final monologue: "With our sincere gaze, we survey these ruins, as if the old monster lay crushed forever beneath the rubble...we pretend it all happened only 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."

The evil of the Holocaust may be gone, but the evil of men is infinite.

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 4)