Documenting the Shoah Night and Fog 1956
dir. Alain Resnais
Landmark documentary about the Shoah – Holocaust
One of the most admired
Shot 10 years after the end of WWII
Poses a relevant issue – moral & esthetic:
How to make a film about the concentration camps?
How to achieve a ‘distance’ so that the viewer can analyze?
How to confront human monstrousness? Built on a pattern of related oppositions
present/past
color/black & white
tranquility/horror
natural environment/buildings
footage shot for the film/archival material Impact of Night and Fog
30 minutes long
Brilliant use of a simple device – frequent shifts of color
Narrator – Poet Jean Cayrol , camp survivor
wrote & read commentary
powerful & quietly reflective
Use of newsreel materials – horror builds up carefully
Final moments built to leave viewers with question:
“Who is responsible?”
The documentary does not offer material/historical analysis
Is not expository
Produces a powerful emotional impact
Searing indictment of Nazi regime
Goes beyond the Shoah to tackle ethnic destruction Documentaries on the Holocaust
• Memory of the Camps 1985
Compiled from footage filmed by Allied forces in 1945
Raw footage, horrific
Ironic narration by British actor Trevor Howard magnifies
• One Survivor Remembers 1985
Oscar-winning documentary co-produced by Holocaust Museum
Interviews survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein
• Shoah 1985
Directed by Claude Lanzmann – No archival footage at all
9 hours of interviews • The Last Days (1998)
Five Jewish Hungarians, now U.S. citizens, tell their
story. Directed James Moll, co-produced by Shoah
Foundation
• Inheritance (2008)
A survivor of Plaszow concentration camp, featured
in Schindler’s List (1994) meets the daughter of
camp’s commander
Relies on direct cinema techniques
• Multiply by Six Million 2007
Documentary short by photographer Ewy Eisen
Still photographs & narration by survivors Other documentaries related to this topic
• The Memory of Justice (1976) dir. Marcel Ophuls
about the Nuremberg Trials after WWII
• The Specialist (1999)
about the trial of Martin Eichmann in Jerusalem
• Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary (2002)
• The Goebbels Experiment (2005)
• A Film Unfinished (2010)
about a Nazi propaganda film shot in Warsaw
• The Decent One (2014)
about Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler