Night and Fog is a French documentary directed by Alain Resnais. The documentary shows the concentration camps 10 years after their liberation in vibrant colors with the greenest of grass fields. Resnais then compares that footage to the older footage of the concentration camps and starved naked bodies sitting in piles. The old concentration camp footage is often scratched giving it even more of a chaotic feel. That being said, Night and Fog is undeniably a powerful documentary.
Night and Fog is narrated by a froggy voice in French that can easily put the viewer off. Instead of stating facts and statistics, the narration is full of existential garbage about the evils men do to other men. The narrator makes it seem as if all Europeans were victims of Nazi atrocities. The narrator must have forgot that at best 10% of French citizens were part of any resistance. The narrator also forgot about the French Waffen SS troops and the French Vichy collaborationist government.
Night and Fog would have been a much better and honest film had it presented atrocities from all sides of the world. For example, Dwight David Eisenhower had German POW’s thrown into a muddy field with a heavily guarded fence around it where at least 750,000 died (some estimates 1.7 million killed). The French army took 630,000 German soldiers as “labor reparation” of which around 250,000 died. I don’t think I even need to go into the atrocities of the Soviet Union. Like most documentaries on “the Holocaust”, Night and Fog looks at history in an irrational and Bolshevik manner. The documentary also featured the Dutch internment camp Westerbork camp which was run completely by Jews (the guards were referred to as the “Jewish SS“).
The "Jewish SS"
Of course, Night and Fog has some historical inaccuracies. The claims of making soap of Jewish bodies has long been discredited as have the stories of regarding skin lampshades. The scenes featuring these lies border on the comical. Night and Fog is best looked at as a piece of art and not a documentary. It features all the same holocaust footage and pictures that have been recycled again and again.
-Ty E
the french shouldn't make documentries like this with their vichy past.
ReplyDeleteBut i've seen the lampshades and benches made of jews.. you can see them here in the Netherlands in several museums... it's not bullshit, it happened.