Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard)
dir. Alain Resnais, 31 mins, 1955 (France)
Disturbing documentary about the Holocaust that's difficult to forget because of the horrifying images it contains. The narrative comes from the point of view of an observer of a former concentration camp in the present day - which, at the time the film was made, was just a decade earlier. A key theme seems to be the site's tranquility, which is contrasted with the crowded, noisy and mechanised death camp that operated there previously. The film unflinchingly documents the most appalling elements of the genocide. Its final suggestion that these horrors are not restricted to a "single time and place" implies that they may occur again. The passivity of the viewer is confronted, with the implication that turning a "blind eye" and "deaf ear" to events such as these is what allows them to happen. *****
