Resnais' Night and Fog

I think, Night and Fog, perhaps unintentionally (perhaps not), captures, ultimately, the problem of historicizing; this is, subjectivity, perspectivism—but, furthermore, in extraordinary circumstances (the Holocaust being one of, if not the most glaring), the signifiers of language cannot accurately represent socio-historical moments the way in which film can. And, at times, it seems Resnais does consciously address this notion: at the 26:41 mark, the narrator explains that “words are insufficient.” His remark precedes six archival photographs, close-ups of severed heads among them, before the dialogue returns: “from the bodies they make soap.” Around the 27:00 mark, the narrator leaves his sentence altogether incomplete: “as for the skin…” is completed (and, perhaps, can only be completed) the way it is: panning across drawings upon dried-skin papers.

            The film’s release coincides with idealized post-war politics of progress—Germany is prospering upon the illusion of temporal dichotomy, that the past has been closed off and archived; and it has been archived—but Night and Fog subverts the notion that this archival footage signifies closure—the binary bleeds. There are moments in the film, moments of uncertainty, where the past/present, black and white/color dichotomy is broken down, or at the very lease, blurred. At the 7:55 mark, Resnais presents us with what appears to be his own footage, completely absent of the color which would signify it as such. With this, as viewers, we’re placed “in one of those night scenes so dear to a Nazi’s heart.” At this same moment, an apparent change in the soundtrack occurs; so, while the image perhaps subverts this temporal dichotomy, the soundtrack begins to reinforce it. Here, the change in soundtrack is prompted (relatively speaking) by an edit-point. As the film progresses, however, this isn’t always the case. More often than not, the music begins to change within shots, and continues into the next edit (sonically blending the archival footage with Resnais’ own).