Also known as
Nuit et brouillard
Lists
- ranked 24 in International Documentary Association's 25th Anniversary Top 25
- ranked 352 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 381 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- ranked 404 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of Movieline's 100 Best Foreign Films
Alain Resnais's harrowing, horrifying film of the Holocaust, mixing documentary footage with shots of concentration camps as they lay, abandoned and almost peaceful, in 1955. Over these images is narration composed by Jean Cayrol, a camp survivor; the words are read with a slow, melancholy inexorability; we know what's coming next. These are haunting images, and the film's message -- about the complicity of those without direct responsibility, those who knew but didn't act, those who have since excused themselves with lies and self-justification -- couldn't come through stronger.
For a far better discussion than I can offer, try Senses of Cinema.