Night and Fog

                Alan Resnais’ documentary Night and Fog is a hauntingly beautiful portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust.  Unlike most documentaries, the image track is much stronger than its soundtrack.  The juxtaposition of the modern day color footage and the black and white stock footage of the concentration camps are powerful and show the destruction of the remnants of such an unimaginably horrible place.  In the majority of documentaries the story is told rather than shown but for Night and Fog, this is not the case.  What the narrator is saying throughout the film is somewhat insignificant in the grand scheme of the film.  He is merely describing to the audience what we are seeing or what the Nazis for example are talking about.  Nothing more is really added with the narration and the film arguably would be just as powerful, if not possibly more, without it.  The film’s score on the other hand has a completely different meaning and purpose to it.  The score seems to contradict the images the film shows and are at times completely ironic.  For example, instead of a somber soundtrack playing over the images of the dead concentration camp victims the film has an upbeat, lighthearted, and arguably at times somewhat happy soundtrack.  It is in complete contradiction of the viewer’s own uneasy, and gloomy feelings while watching the film and the purpose of the film score is probably to provide this complete inner turmoil.  The viewer witnesses somber and completely horrible images but is listening to a soundtrack that gives you a completely opposite feeling and you are left with a feud of your senses.

                While Night and Fog may not be the norm for film documentaries, the way it was edited makes it a complete work of art.  Between the juxtaposition of the color modern day footage and the black and white stock footage, to the film’s happily eerie soundtrack, the documentary becomes nothing less than completely memorable.  Among the film’s powerful images, what Night and Fog leaves the viewer with is the most significant.  In the end when not one perpetrator of the horrible actions of the Holocaust claims responsibility it leaves the viewer with the thought that what happened here can never happen again.  For those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.