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Night and Fog

Night and Fog (1956)

April. 29,1956
|
8.6
| Documentary War

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

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Titreenp
1956/04/29

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

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Merolliv
1956/04/30

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

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ChampDavSlim
1956/05/01

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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Roman Sampson
1956/05/02

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

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punishmentpark
1956/05/03

This one is hard to write something about, but I'm convinced that I should give a try at least. I'll begin with saying that anyone (from an appropriate age, let's say... sixteen?) should have at least seen this film once in his or her life. After that, imagine ten symbolic lines of silence. One... Two... Three...I read somewhere that the music used the film felt highly inappropriate, but I must disagree. It is no way disrespectful, and even morely so like an apt requiem, and as modest as it should sound. The music, just like the narration, the story and the cinematography, are means to an end: to show the world what had happened, and in a manner that will keep the audience watching. One could have just told the story, one could have just played the music, one could have just shown some photos, but Alain Resnais' construction of the world's most evil horror tales is, for the lack of a better word... perfect. Film-journalism at its best.10 out of 10.

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Ankush Jindal
1956/05/04

I found it such a masterpiece that I took the chance to write my first review. The most accurate and vivid image of Holocaust. If you want to know about Holocaust, just watch this documentary. I am usually not affected by any form of violence/gore or intense scene. But this film!! One cannot watch it in single run. And at the end, I sat unmoving, silent for hours. The last line generalized the concentration camp to inhumanity of man towards man and the past to present. ""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.""

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giveandsee
1956/05/05

The documentary seeks to capture the viewer's attention by displaying that glimpse of what went in German concentration camps. This historical footage used in this film made available due to the German's documentation of their key activities. The Germans were very detailed and methodical in their management of the concentration camps.The documentary mentions that the concentration camps seemed like another world. The film started out with beautiful scenery. Beautiful scenery like farm lands, meadows, roads, resort towns, and areas of harvest. These areas were mentioned in a positive manner and were in close proximity to the contrasting concentration camps.The concentration camps testified to Germany's compressed industrial history. The film mentions that Germany itself was like an industrial machine, an industrial machine that was high in production and in working order because of its government. The Germans running the concentration camps believed they were being modern, scientific, or even groundbreaking. The concentration camps were built in tune with the modern times. There were contractors assigned to build them to a certain specification or style. The buildings even had bids on them to be built. The camps were build ahead of time before the prisoners arrived. When it came time fore the prisoners to arrive they were transported in modern age trains and vehicles. The Germans pushed the limit with their science. They experimented with the Jewish prisoners by use of inhumane methods and treatments. Their justification for the experiments was purely for scientific discovery. However, in legitimate science, scientist would not try to back up their views based on a racial bias. This operation was purely self-financed by the German Nazis so any conduct was accepted. Work ethic is heavily implemented in the lives of the Jewish prisoners. The SS stressed to the prisoners that "work is the only means of freedom". However, freedom wasn't possible for the prisoners in reality. Violence was a corrective action used by the SS. In the film it was by the implementation of heavy order. There was uninterrupted fear among the prisoners because at any time they could have a spot check, punishment, or a trip of no return. The killing or punishment by hand was present in the camps, but was not efficient. The Germans implemented mass killing in which they used the crematorium or the gas chamber. The film Night and Fog depicts the mass killings as a seamless process. It was almost like it was nothing to the Nazi German soldiers.At the concentration camps there were no individuals. The camps were only about the collective and smaller groupings of that collective. There were groupings such as woman, children, criminals, the elderly, disabled, and other groups. Certain measures were even made to destroy and individualism that survived with the prisoners. Each prisoner had to wear a symbol to signify that they were a Jewish prisoner. This symbol classified the Jews as a collective in the camps. The prisoners were stripped of all their individual clothes. This was not only humiliating but it reduced the prisoners to objects of flesh and bone. The prisoners started to look alike and have a indeterminable age because they were mostly naked, skinny, and tired. The Germans for the most part destroyed the Jewish prisoner's individuality and culture. However, the Jewish prisoners did keep their faith and found ways to mentally escape their hardship. They wrote letters, created sculptures, or even reflected on scriptures. (There may be some spelling mistakes but I think I got my idea across)

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lhnrlmitz
1956/05/06

Night and Fog documents the tragedy from the perspective of a Holocaust survivor, it pulls you straight into the mood with its poetic narrative, its curiosity arousing opening shot of an abandoned concentration camp and its depressing score.The infamous Holocaust was known to almost everyone through obscured history teachings and heroic war films that didn't leave me with the impact "Night and Fog" did. We are constantly reminded in films and books that 6 million Jews were massacred and other atrocities the Nazis committed but what impact did it really had? To me, little to non, maybe with just a passing thought "Hitler is a real psycho".After watching Night and Fog, then i did finally realized the cruelty that had happened, blockbuster films doesn't show you that, history books couldn't paint the picture. The raw stock images and footages used were gruesome, Stretched to my 16:9 monitor, I was stared by a real corpse, witness bodies being bulldozed.... They didn't made me scared but empty, it was weird, indescribable.We people living in this age are enjoying and entertained by WW2 exploits, Nazis and Hitler being destroyed over and over again in countless films, and us enjoying it, yes "justice" must be served and of cause we are also entertained to have them back as always to be our central villainous figure. This is awfully similar to how the Nazis influence their citizens into believing the Nazi's cause, I'm not saying that modern films of WW2 exploits are all propagandas because most of them are to milk money, yet they delivers the same kind of messages: " Our cause is honorable ", " We serve justice " " We are good and they evil "..... People may argue that the fact is they really are on the good side and films are portraying the fact but that's not the point, the point is what humans are capable of when exposed to all these ideologies, quote from the last stanza of Night and Fog "Are their faces really different from our own?". I couldn't cry nor am i enraged when this documentary completes its final stanza, just empty.

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