Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) - Page 2
© John Nesbit
Scenes of deportees with stars of David embossed on their coats being herded onto the freight cars come as no surprise, but images of mountains of women's' hair, soap manufactured from the prisoners' fat, disfigured prisoners who were subjects of unbelievable medical experiments, decapitated corpses, and pencil thin skeletal bodies being bulldozed and dumped into mass graves convince us that the Holocaust was a true Hell on Earth-the definitive example of man's inhumanity to man.
How do Holocaust apologists explain the gas chambers at Auschwitz with cement ceiling that has been partially chipped away by desperate fingernails attempting to claw their way out of their death trap? And what about those ovens and the charred remains of burnt bodies? And the thousands of starving survivors recovered when the Allies free the camps?
Renais follows the brutal imagery with clips from the Nuhrenberg trials where the Nazi officials all claim that they weren't responsible-that they were merely following orders. The question remains then-who is responsible? Before you jump to an answer, ask yourself why you feel a pang of guilt while watching the film.
As Renais bookends his film with additional pastoral countryside scenery from the Auschwitz area, those questions will remain and will continue to haunt. It's quite plain to see why François Truffaut once called this the greatest film ever made, especially when we consider its poetic impact. Every time I see another film that references the Holocaust, my mind instantly flashes back to this remarkable documentary-its images have become so ingrained that they metaphorically explode inside the brain.
* Note: Night and Fog has been available through VHS presentation for several years. Recently it has found its way to DVD release as a short among other shorts on Short Cinema Journal 1:3.
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