HMD 2013 - Recommended Material - Part 1

1. Night and Fog (Nuits Et Brouillard) Dir. Resnais, 1955

First watched as part of one of my study into documentaries in A-Level Film Studies and the French New Wave, Resnais's Night and Fog is perhaps after so many decades have passed, the freshest and most shocking of films about the Holocaust of the German concentration camps. Beautifully poetic in its narration, the voice that guides the audience in the course of the film is in stark contrast to the extracts of film which captured the diabolical treatment of captives in the camps. Its minimalist feeling of non-intrusive music and narrator perfectly illustrate that the emphasis is on what the power of cinema can achieve when used for a purpose. Banned by the Cannes Film Festival for its content, Night and Fog documents the pure honesty which was needed if people were ever to understand the scale of the horror that was unknown to them in the course of the war.

After the film had finished, my tutor had recommended this film should be seen in every school by pupils who cannot begin to contemplate such an act ever passing. I couldn't agree more with him on this count, and in the course of 30 minutes (as uploaded here), there is no excuse why you shouldn't watch this when you want to reflect on the terrible price of history itself.

WARNING: Graphic footage and images throughout.