It's a documentary about the Holocaust, but I'll issue a SPOILER warning anyway.
Resnais' 1955 film written by Jean Cayrol, a concentration camp survivor, documents the life of the Nazi concentration camps using both black and white archival footage and colour footage filmed by Resnais in Auschwitz and Maïdanek. The colour footage takes us on a tour of the compound while intercutting to the archival footage beginning with the construction of the camps, following through to the torturous day-to-day living, building up to disturbing and harrowing footage of the extermination. Mountains of human hair and personal possessions are collected while their lifeless owners are thrown as rag-dolls into human pits. It's imagery and narration are direct and to the point, set to Hanns Eisler's somewhat lyrical yet still haunting score. Although loaded with strong imagery, the narrator frequently explains the viewer's inability to comprehend the unthinkable reality.
The documentary asks us who is responsible. The officers denounce their responsibility, shifting the blame. The gas chambers and crematoriums now lay run-down and decaying. It ends with a warning of the inevitable.
Francois Truffaut has been quoted as saying: "The effective war film is often the one in which the action begins after the war, when there is nothing but ruins and desolation everywhere .... Alain Resnais' Nuit et brouillard [Night and Fog], the greatest film ever made."
RATING
Highly Recommended
Warning: Video contains some graphic imagery
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