Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
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The Night and Fog Decree issued by Nazi Germany on Dec 7th, 1941, began with this first directive, ôWithin the occupied territories, the adequate punishment for offenses committed against the German Stateàwhich endanger its security of a state of readiness is on principle the death penaltyö (Fray and Spar 1997, 1). A few years later, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, took a line of poetry from WagnerÆs Ring des Nibelungen, ôNacht und Nebelö, to use as the title of what became known as the Night and Fog Operations (Dumling 1998, 577). The title was to imply that acts of terror would occur as if they were invisible and without trace. Documentary filmmaker Alain Resnais (1955) took this title for his film, Night and Fog, the remembrance and suppression of the atrocities that took place in the Nazi death camps. The film uses the written memories of Holocaust survivor Jean Cayrol, narrated by Michel Bouquet, and intercuts black-and-white photos of the horrors of the concentration camp with color footage of the camps ten years after liberation. The title for Night and Fog has a great deal to do with the theme of the unique film. According to Dumling (1998), the ôactual theme of the film is not the events themselves, but their remembrance and the process of retracing what had taken place so as to resist the prevailing tide of concealment, forgetfulness, and repressionö (577). The film does not portray the events of the death camps as a symbol
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on fine display here, giving resonance to a landscape that is all too familiar yet unfortunately grows foggier with each passing year (1).
The title of Night and Fog has multiple layers of meaning that are embodied in the themes and montage of the film. One reviewer of the film explains that there is dual meaning behind the title that plays into the filmÆs theme of forgetting, ôA reference to the arrival of interned prisoners into concentration camps under the cloak of darkness, and the subconscious suppression of knowledge and culpability for the resulting horrorö (Nuit 2000, 1). I think the eviscerating images of the Holocaust cause audiences to have mixed emotions, including those of repulsion and horror and those of sorrow and pity.
Resnais is not trying to elicit emotions from us that appreciate the capacity of human endurance, however. Instead, he is trying to remind us that we cannot forget these kinds of atrocities, even though his modern colored footage of the camps shows just how quickly this is possible. The film made me feel sad about the horrors of the Holocaust, particularly the fact that even such widespread and massive atrocities could be so quickly forgotten, even denied by many. DeVerchai (2002) points t
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Approximate Word count = 2347
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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