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  1950s
 
 

Night and Fog, Directed by Alain Resnais

Argos Films, 1955 (France)

Written and Narrated by: Jean Cayrol


Two shades of evil. Black and white images of hell on earth. . . .

Narrator (Jean Cayrol): The crematorium is no longer in use. The devices of the Nazis are out of date. Nine million dead haunt this landscape. Who is on the lookout from this strange tower to warn us of the coming of new executioners? Are their faces really different from our own? Somewhere among us, there are lucky Kapos, reinstated officers, and unknown informers. There are those who refused to believe this, or believed it only from time to time. And there are those of us who sincerely look upon the ruins today, as if the old concentration camp monster were dead and buried beneath them. Those who pretend to take hope again as the image fades, as though there were a cure for the plague of these camps. Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened only once, 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.

Juxtaposed with silence.

(Silence.)

-G