Nuit et brouillard (1955)

Director:

Alain Resnais

Writer:

Jean Cayrol (writer)
(more)

Release Date:

21 October 1960 (Finland)

Genre:

Documentary | Short | History | War

Plot:

The history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.

Plot Keywords:

Concentration Camp | Nazi | Death Camp | Poland | Violence

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Michel Bouquet	...	Récitant / Narrator (uncredited)
Reinhard Heydrich	...	Himself (behind Hitler) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Heinrich Himmler	...	Himself (with Hitler) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Adolf Hitler	...	Himself (views parade) (archive footage) (uncredited)
Julius Streicher	...	Himself (makes speech) (archive footage) (uncredited)

Directed by
Alain Resnais

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Jean Cayrol		writer
Chris Marker		uncredited

Produced by
Anatole Dauman	....	producer
Samy Halfon	....	producer
Philippe Lifchitz	....	producer

Original Music by
Hanns Eisler

Cinematography by
Ghislain Cloquet
Sacha Vierny

Film Editing by
Alain Resnais		(uncredited)

Production Management
Édouard Muszka	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
André Heinreich	....	assistant director
Jean-Charles Lauthe	....	assistant director
Chris Marker	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Jacqueline Chasney	....	sound recordist
Henri Colpi	....	sound recordist

Special Effects by
Henry Ferrand	....	special effects

Editorial Department
Anne Sarraute	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Georges Delerue	....	orchestrator

Other crew
Henri Michel	....	historical consultant
Olga Wormser	....	historical consultant
Alexander Alan	....	text: English version (uncredited)

Production Companies

• Argos Films

Distributors

• Aurora (2006) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Criterion Collection, The (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• Ripley's Home Video (2007) (Italy) (DVD)
• Umbrella Entertainment (2007) (Australia) (DVD)

Also Known As:

Night and Fog

Runtime:

32 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Brazil:18 | Iceland:16 | Portugal:M/12 | Singapore:NC-16 | Australia:M | Italy:T | Finland:K-16 | UK:15

Company:

Argos Films

Trivia:

The title refers to a strategy instigated by Himmler in December 1941 that helped propagate the fear of the Third Reich. Anyone caught resisting the Nazi occupiers would be arrested and then immediately whisked off to the camps in such a way that they would vanish without a trace, "into the night and fog".

Quotes:

Récitant/Narrator: Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened at a certain time and in a certain place, and those who refuse to see, who do not hear the cry to the end of time.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 (1964)

Words cannot express the power of this film.

I had heard the phrase "Night and Fog", but had missed the true meaning of it until I saw this movie sitting on a shelf in a local video store. I rented it and watched.

I don't possess a vocabulary to convey the impact the images had upon me. I sat unmmoving, sick to my stomach. Those images would not leave my head.

As a student of history, I had seen still images and brief clips of the victims of the Holocaust. None of it compared to seeing these images moving across my screen.

To any doubters of the Holocaust, I say, "Watch this film!" It did happen. This is the result of hatred and complacency. We like to think it couldn't happen here, until we remember the treatment of the Native Americans and the slaves brought to this country. We think it could never happen again, until Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda, etc., showed it still does.