User Reviews

I consider myself to have a fairly strong stomach- I've seen the results of traffic accidents and violent crimes, and like anyone else I have seen (via the TV) the horrors of war. But I was just totally unprepared for this. It was thirty harrowing minutes of a sight-seeing tour of hell.

It was so difficult for me to sit through that I was tempted to shut the DVD player off three times, but I told myself, "No, this is important. It has to be seen, if only as a reminder of what can happen when an inhuman world-view is fused to state-of-the-art technology." The Holocaust was far more (and worse) than simple mass-killing, awful as that is. It was a business decision, coolly and scientifically calculated, to destroy millions of innocents while reaping a profit from them- in death as well as in life.

The sight of the starved, broken bodies, the ghastly scenes taken in the medical labs in the death camps, the sight of little children being led by the hand to their last train ride. It is all so monstrous as to be indescribable.

I am glad I watched it. But I do not think that I'll be watching it ever again, and I give it a 10. It affected me that deeply.

I originally had no intention to see this movie and had no idea that it even existed until I saw it. I actually saw it in High School Economics class (of all places)because my teacher had just finished showing it to his world history class and instead of wanting to hear him drone on about the GDP and recessions, we smooth talked him into showing us what was in his VCR. We had no idea what we were about to see.

This movie is probably the best holocaust documentary ever made. The images of piles of human hair, emaciated skeletons being pushed around by bulldozers, lampshades of human skin, men looking like corpses walking around, has never left me. The opera and classical music in the background helps to further add to the shock value of this film.

After about 10 minutes, kids in my class told my teacher we didn't want to watch this movie anymore. We stopped it and there was still 30 minutes left in class. We didn't learn anything about economics that day, we talked about the holocaust instead.

If you want to describe or give your audience a feeling for the holocaust, or "Man's Inhumanity To Man", then this is the vehicle to use..Show it..be warned, it is so powerful, that you will never forget what you see, neither will any of your viewers..It is impossible to describe, intermixing l955 footage of Auchwitz Concentration Camp, with captured Nazi footage which the allies found at the end of the war, and the scenes of American and British troops liberating the camps...In French, with English subtitles.. and scenes that are unforgettable and horrific. Even the sad music of death from this film plays in my ears, and I have not seen it in 15 years. Once you hear it, you will know.

This is the one to show if you want people to understand the truth of what happened and the reason for its reaction in today's current events....It is shocking in a special way. I showed it to my classes. Students were warned, and told what was coming, they said it would be "nothing" By the end some were crying and moaning in horror...

I had heard the phrase "Night and Fog", but had missed the true meaning of it until I saw this movie sitting on a shelf in a local video store. I rented it and watched.

I don't possess a vocabulary to convey the impact the images had upon me. I sat unmmoving, sick to my stomach. Those images would not leave my head.

As a student of history, I had seen still images and brief clips of the victims of the Holocaust. None of it compared to seeing these images moving across my screen.

To any doubters of the Holocaust, I say, "Watch this film!" It did happen. This is the result of hatred and complacency. We like to think it couldn't happen here, until we remember the treatment of the Native Americans and the slaves brought to this country. We think it could never happen again, until Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc., showed it still does.

This extraordinary film was, of course prohibited during the years that Argentina was ruled by the military dictatorship. Only one man, dared to show it in the middle of mass genocide. This teacher, Manlio Pereira, was the director of the only private film school during the late ´70s. Obviously the school received strange invasions of military spies, but Pereira not only continued to show this masterpiece, but also made a great ceremony out of it, speaking loudly and profoundly of what nazism meant, what were it terribly effects, and why Argentina has falled again in the taste for this awfull criminal behaviour. It is a shame that not always such outstanding names like these are remembered for this little great things.

Resnais intersperses then-current-day (1955) color footage of Auschwitz with archival B&W to demystify and provide context for the Holocaust in modern western society rather than in anything unique to the German experience of totalitarianism. Photos of concentration camp personnel at home with their families invite the viewer to reflect on the banality of evil. Construction of the camps is described as like that of any large project, requiring bids, architects, contracts. Heart-wrenching scenes document a prisoner's view, from the transports being loaded through selections, showers/gas chambers, existence in the barracks, and in the end, mass death.

Included on the DVD is an excerpt from a 1994 radio interview with Resnais, wherein he mentions French censors required the film makers to obscure the hat of a policeman guarding prisoners being deported - the French government refused to permit this recognition of French complicity and assistance with the deportations.

Alain Resnais' overwhelming short piece on the horrors of the holocaust pretty much had me shaking by the end of the film. All of the footage- even the color footage viewing into the emptiness of the camps- brings the audience to feel a mass of emotions. More than anything, however, the narration is what hits the nail on the head. While it's only half an hour long, rather brief compared to it's dramatized contemporaries like Schindler's List and The Pianist, or the massive documentaries like Sorrow and the Pity or Shoa, I'd think that it should be required viewing for any mature minded person (not for children, it's too disturbing from my perspective) interested in truly comprehending what was really going on in those god-awful years in Europe. A+

This movie is the greatest Holocaust film ever, and few will ever deny this fact. Beautiful and intense, its makes the stomach turn when one sees the footage and pictures obtained in this film. I've never seen footage this brutal in my entire life, not even in a movie. The voice-overs seem odd at place, but it is really the voice of history, speaking of unspeakable horrors which are captured almost perfectly in this film. A dark tribute to those who lost their lives in the concentration camps. This should be used as a teaching tool for tolerance and the atrocities of World War II.

This short film is one of the best ones I have seen about the holocaust. It's blunt and unflinching in how it approaches the horrors of the mass extermination of the masses--particularly the Jews of Europe. Although VERY disturbing in its imagery, it is important because death and mass murder SHOULD be disturbing. Technically, this was well-made--with an excellent use of film footage and modern color footage combined with very good (and not preachy) narration. Because it is so blunt and disturbing, it's best that little kids not see this and older kids/teens who see this should have the chance to process and discuss the film.

FYI--try to find the Criterion version of the film, as it includes an interesting interview with Resnais (the director). He indicated that the French government censors made him change a portion of the film to block out the helmet worn by one of the policemen who is forcing deportees onto the trains. Apparently, he was a FRENCH policemen and this didn't "look good", so the scene was altered. Although a fine film, distortions like this are very scary--as this is revisionism and contrary to honest film-making.

Alain Resnais, a distinguished cinema director, working with Jean Cayrol, produced a document for all humanity to see and reflect. The director visited some of the concentration camps in Europe, where he filmed the abandoned sites in which millions lost their lives in one of the most shameful times in the history of mankind. European Jews paid a great price for no reason at all. Hitler and his followers decided to eliminate them because they saw in them a threat and their money and their labor would fuel the war machinery they needed to win the war.

The director uses color photography to show how the camps looked in 1955, then switches to the black and white of the material from an earlier time. Mr. Resnais juxtaposes the same camps during the 1940s at the height of the WWII conflict and how the lonely and forgotten places of what the director found in 1955. Even looking at these places ten years after the end of the war, these silent witnesses of the horrors the victims experienced, acquire a surreal look.

It's impossible to fathom what went on. We look in disbelief as bulldozers dump the inert bodies of the dead into common burial places. It's hard to imagine the ordeal these innocent victims went through, even for a moment. They didn't deserve the indignity of dying the way they did at the hands of people that should have known better. No excuses will ever justify what Hitler, and his fanatics, did to eliminate a race that didn't merit their hatred.

"Night and Fog" has powerful images and it packs such power, it's hard to make sense of what one sees in this important documentary that should be seen by everyone.

Compact and riveting, this documentary is a thirty-two minute history lesson on the evils of Hitler and his horrid concentration camps of WWII. The film is uncomfortable to sit through. It may leave you drained. Almost certainly, it will leave you angry.

The place names sound academic: Dachau, Ravensbruck, and of course ... Auschwitz. But the images are real. They are graphic, and they are grizzly. They sear your brain with a ferocity that no learned professor could ever hope to impart from a classroom lectern. Set a Holocaust denier down, in a front row seat to watch this film. Then see what happens to his "belief" that the Holocaust never happened.

The film opens in the mid-1950s with the camera panning empty fields where the camps once existed. These images are in color. Then, flash back to 1933, in B&W, when the horrors began. And then in subsequent years, German industry plans the camps, and the Jewish people become slave labor to construct their own prisons. These flashbacks show real people, real exteriors, real interiors. No profit-motivated blockbuster by Steven Spielberg will ever match "Night And Fog" for its honesty and its sense of grim reality.

The film's narration is fast and intense. Not a moment is wasted; no filler. It's all substance, deep and piercing. It's important to prepare yourself mentally before viewing this film. And I would not recommend it for children.

What's mind-boggling to me is the pervasiveness of the evil. It wasn't just a deluded Hitler and his terrorist thugs. It was the general mentality. Fostered by grinding poverty and a communications vacuum, Hitler's egomaniac madness forced a general acceptance of evil, helped along by Goebbels and his propaganda machine. As the film shows, even doctors and nurses succumbed to the idea that genocide was "rational".

Down the road of far right-wing ideology ... where does it lead? Keep traveling down that road and eventually it leads to Hitler, to dictatorship, to torture, and to the acrid stench of Nazi concentration camps. It would be hard to imagine a more massive evil.

I'm rather inclined to agree with film director Francois Truffaut that "Night And Fog" is one of the greatest films ever made ... if not the greatest.

This haunting film tears at our very essence. Narrated by a Holocaust survivor in a subdued, restrained voice, some of the most horrific images of inhumanity are presented matter-of-factly, having more impact than virtually any other cinematic presentation I've seen. I had a high school teacher who, himself, was in a German prison camp. After his own liberation, he had the experience of being part of the force that went into the death camps. He showed us pictures that I'm sure would have been seen as inappropriate for our young eyes. These images have stayed with me my whole life. I owe him a debt of gratitude for his courage in bringing us into his world. I think that this brief film probably did the same thing for people of that era. The films that have been put together, the still photos, and the insightful commentary have an enormous impact. Don't watch unless you have a strong stomach. The pictures tell the story and they pull no punches.

Called the "greatest film of all time" by director Francois Truffaut, the documentary Night and Fog by Alain Resnais shows the holocaust tragedy in all its horror. Though the film is only thirty minutes in length, it is devastating in its impact so approach with caution. Night and Fog refers to the arrival of prisoners in Auschwitz under the cover of darkness and also the ultimate failure of the Nazis at Nuremberg to take responsibility for it. Written by Jean Cayrol, a holocaust survivor, and poetically narrated by Michel Bouquet, its gruesome images seem like a surreal nightmare. The purpose of the 30-minute documentary is to document for future generations what actually took place in the camps since this was a time when officialdom was reluctant to talk about what happened and the full extent of the horror was not generally known.

Another purpose is to show the ultimate failure of the Nazis at Nuremburg to take responsibility for it. It would have been welcome to also depict the complicity of others: big business, the other victims of the Nazi's, similar atrocities such as the My Lai massacre, ethnic cleansing, genocide, state violence and so forth but this was not possible given the length of the film and its purpose. Today, when there is so much holocaust denial, people need to be reminded not that the Nazis were demons but of the consequences of unchecked state power without an ethical base.

The film opens in 1955 with an image of a barren field of grass with lush romantic music in the background. The scene then abruptly shifts to wartime. We are in Auschwitz and the prisoners are arriving. We are shown scenes shot after liberation that are so shocking that they have never been made public outside of this film. Resnais does not spare us: the hair shaved off the heads of women piled high on the floor, bodies -- men -women - children -- are tossed in a garbage pit like so much rubbish, their fat used to make soap. The film only lasts a short time, but the images remain indelible. Unwillingness to acknowledge responsibility is depicted in brief scenes of the Nuremberg Trials. As we witness the conscious distortion of the past still going on today, we are left numb.

"Night and Fog" is a chilling, haunting documentary that juxtaposes footage of present-day Auschwitz (present-day at the time of filming) with footage of the atrocities committed there during WWII. I defy anyone to watch this movie and not be affected by what they see. Resnais creates a spare and unsentimental film. There's no editorializing here, no attempts to soften the horror or find redemption in a pitch black period of world history. This makes movies like "Schindler's List" and other Hollywood recreations of the Holocaust look like phony shams, despite whatever good intentions they have. The deserted concentration camps have the feeling of ghost towns; you half expect to see tumbleweeds blowing across the empty spaces. The pain and suffering of the countless victims who went through the camps is almost palpable.

Deeply disturbing, but obviously an important chronicle of an event the world would do wise never to forget.

Grade: A+

This incredible documentary is among the very first films concerning the Nazi horrors , as we see harsh rampage , grisly murders , astonishing massacres against the unfortunate prisoners . Thus , when the incoming transports , mostly Jews, SS soldiers made instant decisions , those who were fit to labors were sent into the camp, others including the children , were dispatched immediately to the gas chambers . The picture providing a view of the terrible reality that begins with the Nazi rise to power in 1933 , being told by a voice-i- off whose narrator is the prestigious French actor Michael Bouquet. The documentary contains archive footage with the protagonists of the tragedy, as there appears Adolf Hitler, Reinhard Heydrich , Heinrich Himmler , Julius Streicher , among others . It packs sensitive and relaxed musical score fitting to horrible frames composed by Eisler and conducted by Georges Delerue . The film is perfectly edited and directed by Alain Resnais who takes WWII shots , adding recent images of concentration camps and specially from Auschwitz. . From the building of the concentration camps to the eventual roundup of Jews and others issues , as people from across Europe are herded into cattle cars and transported to the camps where those who were not not immediately executed are put to work. By 1942, the Nazi's "final solution" - the extermination of all Jews - is in full force.

The short-documentary dealing with the Holocaust is based on real events by means of photographs and stock-footage. Alain Resnais' short 1955 documentary film in which appears work camps are transformed into extermination centers to implement the policy of genocide thought at the Wannsee Conference . All four camps , Sobibor , Chelmo , Blezek and Treblinka in the Lublin district of Poland were under the command of SS Odilo Globocnick and , of course, Himmler and Heydrich , the architects of final solution . There was some minor industrial activity linked to the war effort but the main work was the execution of inmates . Millions of prisoners died in the concentration camps through mistreatment, disease , starvation , and overwork, or were executed as unfit for labor. More than three million Jews died in them, usually in gas chambers , although many were killed in mass shootings and by other means.

Prisoners were often transported in inhumane conditions by rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their destination . The prisoners were confined to the rail cars, often for days or weeks, without food or water . Many died of dehydration in the intense heat of summer or froze to death in winter. Concentration camps also existed in Germany itself , and while they were not specifically designed for systematic extermination, many of their prisoners perished because of harsh conditions or were executed.Victims were brought to the camp in unventilated transports , and all but a handful were gassed after arrival,the gas chambers could accommodate hundred prisoners at one time using Zyclon B which was a crystallized prussic acid which dropped into death chamber , most of their corpses were burned in open pits . The documentary reflects amazing images of the exterminations camps . These camps differed from the rest , since not all of them were also concentration camps. Although none of the categories is independent, and each camp could be classified as a mixture of several of the above, and all camps had some of the elements of an extermination camp, systematic extermination of new-arrivals occurred in very specific camps. Of these, four were extermination camps, where all new-arrivals were simply killed - the "Aktion Reinhard" camps (Treblinka , Sobibor and Belzec) , together with Chelmno. Two others (Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek) were combined concentration and extermination camps . Others were at times classified as "minor extermination camps". Little of the camps remain today but the memory of what happened lives on.

Before reviewing a film, the least I can do is to watch it, but how can I properly review something my eyes barely watched? How can I truly express emotions when my eyes kept staring away from the screen? Still, there's no doubt that Alain Resnais' "Night and Fog" remains one of the most essential documentaries ever made, and one to haunt any viewer, regardless of such considerations as age, gender or generation.

The documentary is of thirty-something minutes, but its impact on the mind lasts probably longer than any war epic. Its effect probably relies on the fact that one image is worth a thousand words, therefore, all the still shots of piled up bodies, of remains from the gas chambers, of the devastation inhabiting the last survivors' souls, speak infinite statements about the barbarity mankind reached during these doomed years. Each sight of a cadaver, mouth agape and frozen eyes, is less moved by a voyeuristic attempt to shock the viewers than to shaken the last impulses of disbelief, if they ever existed.

The film is graphic, horrific, the footage of the Death camps is absolutely inconceivable for a rational mind, even more because it's real, but to reduce "Night and Fog" to a succession of unsettling images deprives it from its real meaning, and overlook its achievement on the field of documentary-film-making. It sounds revolting to talk about technical achievement when a film tackles such a subject as Death camps, but in no way, it would have stood the test of time and been regarded as such a masterpiece if it only consisted on pure description. In terms of editing, combination of images and colors, on writing, and I dare to use the word 'storytelling', the film transcends its horrific theme to a level of universal humanism.

"Night and Fog" even resonates as a misleading title, while we expect a movie in black-and-white, made of disturbing archives, we're taken off-guard by the panoramic shots of the abandoned grounds that were, ten years before, the theater of horrific mass-murders. The film was released ten years indeed after the liberation of the Camps by the Nazis, the passing of time had already buried under the green grasses and the blue sky, the unspeakable memories. The contrast between the color and the black-and-white works as a deliberate warning: these abandoned grounds, where cars, peasants, people and animals pass by, are forever haunted by the ghosts from the past that the black-and-white images resurrect in our spirits.

Narrated by Michel Bouquet, the commentary is very straight-forward and never overuses sentimentality, it depict some slices of life (for a lack of a better word) in the Camps. It never occults the omnipresence of death, nor the process of selection that was starting up in the wagons where people stood for hours and hours until the first victims would die of suffocation and starvation, in conditions that are not even tolerable for animals. The selection went on when in the arrival: the film shows some atrocious pictures of prisoners, not the thin and deadly looking we trained our eyes to endure, but those with normal bodies, women with bellies and curvy forms, immediately shot in common graves, before technology would find a faster and more sophisticated way to process.

And those who were spared were only under a suspended sentence, put in a state of slavery, their only right was to work, to eat the soup whose each spoon was a month more or less of life expectancy, before dysentery, medical experimentation, cold, heat, or exhaustion would finish the Nazis' job. And as time went by, a new order began, and the Camp would become a society in microcosm, with its hierarchy, its design, with such ironic oddities as hospitals and jails, and prostitution. The educational value of the film never deprives it from its unbearable horror: what the commentator says, the images show, what he doesn't, the images still show. And while looking at them, we can feel a ghostly past whispering above our shoulders, not to forget these people, that these things happened and, who knows, might happen again.

The scoring is another highlight of the movie. Instead of using a sort of ominous theme, meant to embody the atrocity of the images, it's a sober and austere tune made of a few flute and string sounds. It's like a Bergman movie theme, à la "Autumn Sonata", conveying a constant melancholy, which in the case of "Night and Fog", emphasizes the horror by tunneling it into its inner banality. The routinely aspect of the horror is perhaps more horrifying than the horror itself, people lived there, not for days, not months, but years. And when Death was present every second, when any awkward look could be fatal, multiplying it in years is simply unthinkable.

"Night and Fog" was released at a time when memories were still fresh, but quoting the French singer Jean Ferrat in his song of the same name, that I felt the urge to listen to after the film, and that I highly recommend for the non-French speakers: "How quickly blood dries once it is deemed historical." In 1955, it wasn't history yet, it could still feel as a newsreel. But as it was already making up for posterity, the purpose was already to remind people that routine for Camp prisoners was made of slavery, random executions, rifle scopes, barking German shepherds and soldiers … on a perpetual night and fog.

And if fog can clear, if the darkest clouds can leave the sky to let the sunshine return, if a Camp can be liberated, nothing could ever liberate the survivors from the vivid trauma forever engraved in their memories, from their 'night and fog' as states of mind. As for us, all we can do is to share a part of this trauma, as a tragic but necessary heritage of our Human civilization.

It's hard to say whether this film is really about the concentration camps. It certainly isn't about the holocaust. Its themes are broader, in a genocide style that represents all crimes against humanities that have ever been committed and are being committed to this day. The images are clear, but in 1955 it was still too early to make a film about the holocaust.

Sure, some elements of the Holocaust itself are there. And they do not only lie in the images of the Nazi concentration camps, the vivid and painful to watch ones. They also lie in the score, that at first is more reminding of a romantic documentary work of Robert Flaherty, and then tricks you in thinking that after all, you are quite alright if you are watching this. This is the same fake-safety feeling that the people in the concentration camps must have felt as orchestras played as the executions were carried out.

At the end of the day, the film is about humanity, and whether we are humans after all. It's the sort of cry that can't be answered. "Who is responsible" asks the monotone narrative voice, and that question is followed by the picture of a weak looking man, his head shaved, his eyes fearfully staring right at us.

It's one of the only documentaries I have ever seen that knows what it's doing what the footage it has. It doesn't need to be manipulated, it doesn't need to be distorted. And the narration is not a voice of God; it's a human voice, that adds to the impact. The narrator himself seems as shocked and as mortified as we are. This is not a film about the images, and the importance they carry. It's a film about our reaction to the sight of these images.

This movie is extremely disturbing and it really shows how awful concentration camps were. It was very moving. I must warn you it is extremely graphic and if you are squeamish I don't recommend seeing it due to the disturbing images of inmates and Nazi torture. It is all in french but it is dubbed.

If you like the sad historical truth of the Holocaust, then Night and Fog is a must see movie.

This film is not suitable for young children. Teenagers might be a little better but the pictures are quite gross so they must be prepared.

Alan Resnais' "Night and Fog" was made in 1955 and illustrates with ghastly details exactly what went on inside the Nazi death camps of Struthuf,Oranienburg,Auschwitz,Belsen,Ravenbruck and Dachau.The footage was shot with the Nazi's own cameras and those of the liberating Allied Forces.This thirty minutes documentary is extremely graphic and disturbing.It shows buckets of detached heads lining the corridors,medical 'experiments' in progress and huge mounds of half burnt bodies being bulldozed into mass graves.Resnais filmed color footage of the empty,overgrown concentration camps Auschwitz and Majdanek and juxtaposed it with historical black and white images.The score by Hans Eisler is incredibly powerful as is the narration written by Jean Cayrol,a French poet,novelist and camp survivor.This is surely the film that needs to be seen by everyone interested in the true story of the Holocaust.10 out of 10.

This is an excellent depiction of the horrors that occurred during the Holocaust. This film makes "Schindler's List" look like a child's movie.

It is VERY graphic and not recommended for the faint of heart.

To be sure, this movie is well made and informative. It certainly does its job in forcing viewers to feel moved by the Holocaust. However I believe it to be wrong to show this movie to high school students. As an adult this movie horrified me. I now have images in my mind that I cannot forget no matter how hard I try to. Nothing can prepare someone for the images in this movie. I watched it after a week long program on the Holocaust and genocide. The whole week combined was not as traumatic as this film was. It has been shown that many students feel a sense of trauma after learning about the Holocaust. Once a student is emotionally and psychologically scared by a topic (such as the Holocaust) they don't want to learn about it any more. This film effectively moves students to feel disgust and horror when thinking about the Holocaust. It just as effectively halts conversation and learning about the Holocaust and current genocide. The film also creates a fear of the victims of the Holocaust for many viewers. And worst of all, in my opinion, it dehumanizes the victims of the Holocaust. The film never mentions life beforehand for the victims. The victims are not people in the film, they are just victims of a terrible event. Isn't it just as important to remember who the victims were as it is to remember what happened to them?