Night and Fog () is a 1956 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the Nacht und Nebel (German for "Night and Fog") program of abductions and disappearances decreed by Nazi Germany. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek established in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The music of the soundtrack was composed by Hanns Eisler.
Resnais was originally hesitant about making the film and refused the offer to make it until Cayrol was contracted to write the script. The film was shot entirely in the year 1955 and is composed of contemporary shots of the camps plus stock footage. Resnais and Cayrol found the film very difficult to make due to its graphic nature and subject matter. The film faced difficulties with French censors unhappy with a shot of a French police officer in the film, and with the German embassy in France, which attempted to halt the film's release at the Cannes Film Festival. Night and Fog was released to critical acclaim, and still receives very high praise today. It was re-shown on French television nationwide in 1990 to remind the people of the "horrors of war".
Synopsis The film alternates between past and present, using historical black-and-white and newly shot colour footage, respectively. The first part of Night and Fog shows remnants of Auschwitz while the narrator Michel Bouquet describes the rise of Nazi ideology. The film continues with comparisons of the life of the Schutzstaffel to the starving prisoners in the camps. Bouquet shows sadism inflicted upon the doomed inmates, including scientific and medical experiments, executions, and rape. The next section is shown completely in black-and-white, and depicts images of gas chambers and piles of bodies. The final topic of the film depicts the liberation of the country, the discovery of the horror of the camps, and the questioning of who was responsible for them.
Production
Background and development From 1954 to 1955, a number of activities took place in observance of the tenth anniversary of the liberation of France and of the concentration camps. One of these was an exhibition curated by Olga Wormser and Henri Michel, Resistance, Liberation, Deportation, which opened on 10 November 1954 at the Institut Pédagogique National (National Teaching Institute) in Paris. The exhibit was based on Michel and Wormser's monograph, which had been published earlier in 1954 in a special issue of Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale.No. 15, July–September 1954.Wormser had been researching concentration camps as far back as 1940. After the war, she collected survivors' testimonies for Opération Lutetia and helped with the French prosecution for the Nuremberg trials. In 1952, Henri Michel called on her to join the Comité d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, and she also became a member of the Réseau du souvenir, an association of former members of the French Resistance who wanted their efforts commemorated. In 1955, Michel and Wormser published Tragédie de la Déportation 1940-1945: Témoignages de survivants des camps de concentration allemands(Paris: Hachette, 1955). The first public notice of a proposed film project was given during a radio broadcast on 10 November 1954, the opening day of the exhibition.
Although Michel was under pressure from veterans' organizations to create a film that would honor French Resistance fighters, Wormser argued for a scholarly approach that would show the concentration camps as a systematic microcosm of the German war economy. Michel recognized that this approach would enable broader financing, and both re-envisioned the film as "communicating historical research through contemporary media." Initially, Michel thought the film could take the form of a montage of news reports. But as a result of the exhibit Resistance, Liberation, Deportation, both he and Wormser had received many items created by former inmates during their internment. They came to believe that they could create a unique perspective by providing an inside view of the camps.
"The genocide of the Jews was treated in French remembrance as more of a side issue—something that was in any case supposedly a matter for the Jews themselves and not for the majority of society. Michel and Wormser might have wanted scholarly objectivity instead of the heroism favoured by the deportees' association...but nevertheless the Holocaust had remained a blind spot even for them."
Film producers Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfton, and Philippe Lifchitz were invited to this exhibit and felt that a film should be made on the subject. Anatole Dauman, originally from Warsaw, undertook the production for Argos Films and arranged for co-financing by Films Polski, the Polish state production company. Dauman approached filmmaker Alain Resnais, who had experience with documentary films since 1948.Barsam 1992, pg. 262 For more than a week, Resnais resisted the offer, believing that only someone with first-hand experience of concentration camps should attempt the subject matter.
Resnais eventually agreed, providing that poet and novelist Jean Cayrol, who had been a concentration camp prisoner, would collaborate on the project. Resnais officially signed his contract for the film on 24 May 1955.Knaap 2006, pg. 8 Cayrol had written in 1946 about his experience as a survivor of Mauthausen in Poèmes de la nuit et brouillard ("Poems of night and fog"), from which the documentary was titled. Resnais intended the film to warn of the horrors of Nazism, which he feared could be repeated during the Algerian War, during which torture and internment were already taking place.Rashkin 2008, pg. 83
The film was commissioned by two organizations: the first was the Comité d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale (Committee on the history of the Second World War), a government commission assigned the tasks of assembling documentary material on, and of launching historical inquiries and studies of, the period of the French occupation from 1940 to 1945. The second was the Réseau du souvenir (Network of memory), an association devoted to the memory of those deported to camps. A pre-production meeting was held on 28 May 1955, during which participants decided "to explain clearly how the concentration-camp system (its economic aspect) flowed automatically from fascism". The film's working title, Resistance and Deportation, was changed to the French translation of the German term Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog). This was the term for handling World War II prisoners according to a decree promulgated by Himmler on 7 December 1941. This decree provided that those resisting the Reich, who were arrested in their own countries but not promptly executed, would be deported to camps where they would vanish without a trace, "into the night and fog".
Another layer of meaning is expressed one quarter of the way through the film: Hanns Eisler's chilling score, which has accompanied images of deportation, is disrupted as the train arrives at Auschwitz. The narrator observes that during the train ride, "death makes its first choice" and "a second is made upon arrival in the night and fog". The visuals cut to a shot of trains arriving in night and fog, which has become a metaphor for the mystery of their situation.
Evolving structure of the film Michel's and Wormser's 1954 exhibit Resistance, Liberation, Deportation was organized in nine parts: The convoys Arrival at the camp and quarantine Daily life; atmosphere in the camp, the locations and camp sites, the schedule, hygiene, diet, a typical day Work in the concentration camps, chores, factory work, secret war factories Social categories in the camps, the SS, prisoner administration, the slaves The permanence of humanity, spiritual life and resistance The sick bay: the anteroom of death, medical organization, the camp pathology, human experiments Death: the last station, "natural" death, induced death, massive exterminations The camp evacuations and their liberation
This was adapted into seven parts for the first draft of the film (dating from late February/early March 1955): Departure and arrival of the transports Planning and organization of the camp Sketch of the everyday life of a deportee Work in a concentration camp Sick bay and death Escape and resistance Liberation, return, reintegration and commemoration (pilgrimage to the camp)
The outline of the film changed dramatically when in April 1955, Wormser and Michel went to Poland to attend commemorations for the tenth anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation. They wanted to include film of how Auschwitz was currently seen. They were approached by Auschwitz museum staff, who supplied additional documentation and images. Visiting Poland gave Wormser and Michel the opportunity to make contact with Polish archives. The result was broadening the scope of the film from a nationalist view toward a broader European perspective.
Once Resnais joined the team, a new script (dated 11 June 1955) emerged with 12 sections: The camp, deserted in 1956 (mixture of the four camps) An "algebraic" history of Nazism Himmler's visit to Dachau; All is in place, the mill starts to grind bones The convoys Arrival at the camp Quarantine and daily life The locations of the camp Himmler's second visit; Continuation of the history of Nazism The proliferation of the system The techniques of extermination The evacuation of the camps; What the Allies found The Auschwitz Museum; The lesson to be learned
Filming The film draws on several sources, including black-and-white still images from various archives, excerpts from older black-and-white films from French, Soviet, and Polish newsreels, footage shot by detainees of the Westerbork internment camp in the Netherlands, or by the Allies' "clean-up" operations, plus new color and black-and-white footage filmed in 1955 at concentration camps. Resnais filmed his color sequences in Eastmancolor rather than Agfacolor, using the footage to contrast the desolate tranquility of several concentration camps — Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Struthof, and Mauthausen — with the horrific events that occurred there during World War II, to muse on the diffusion of guilt, and to pose the question of responsibility.
The film deals briefly with the conditions of prisoners, and shows disturbing footage of prisoners and dead victims in the camps. While Night and Fog states that the Nazis made soap from the corpses, giving the possible impression that this was done regularly, this claim is now considered untrue, with the exception of isolated cases. Researching and making the film were difficult for Resnais. He suffered nightmares during filming and found himself waking up screaming in the night.Wilson 2006, pg. 25 As Resnais began filming on site in Auschwitz, the nightmares ended.
From 29 September to 4 October 1955, Resnais and his crew filmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They next shot scenes at Majdanek from 7 to 10 October. For the archival material, Resnais had to use black-and-white footage, but did not receive any from English, German or French military sources. Some of the stock footage in the film is from Michel and Wormser's exhibit.Haggith 2005, pg. 130 Other stock footage is from the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdokumentatie (National institute for war documentation) in the Netherlands, and from French television, Gaumont, and the association of former deportees.