themes. He uses colored footage of the modern camps in 1955 with intercuts of black-and-white photos of the atrocities of the building of the camps, deportations, selection, daily existence, slave labor, torture, starvation, diseased and death. Resnais film makes us feel like tourists on what will ultimately be a trip through hell. He begins his film by treating us to lyrical and gentle imagery to prepare us for the horrors that will unfold. As Jardine (2004) says, ôResnais uses slow tracking to lyrically portray the quiet, pastoral contemporary settings of the death camps, easing us into the filmÆs grisly subject matterö (1).
The filmÆs narration by Michel Bouquet is based on the written memories of Holocaust survivor Jean Cayrol, whose memories are poetic in tone. The depictions reinforce our tourist perspective and are gentle in the beginning but always making us question. As Bouquet narrates over one section, ôAn ordinary village for vacationersùwith a marketplace and a steepleùcan lead all too easily to a concentration campö (Resnais 1955). The concentration camps ten years after liberation are in color and life goes on about them, making us realize that forgetfulness comes quickly. One of the shots of the campsÆ barbed wire fences is narrated with words that reinforce this point, ôThe blood has dried, the tongues are silent. The blocks are visited only by a camera. Weeds have grown where the prisoners used to walk. No footstep is heard but our ownö (Resnais 1955).
The pastoral and lyric imagery of the opening scenes soon give way to photos that illustrate the words depths of humanity. Hanns EislerÆs score is used to accentuate the irony between the contrasting imagery, as well as becoming overwhelming during moments of human atrocity. Still images of the camps and stock footage are used to show us the barbarity of life in the camps, from degrading treatment of naked prisoners to brutalization of h...