Sunday, April 9, 2017
099 - Night and Fog, 1956, France. Dir. Alain Resnais.
On December 7, 1941, the Nazi regime enacted a program whereby people would disappear in the streets. Never to be seen again.
It was called Nacht und Nebel.
Night and Fog.
In 1955 the land looks pretty.
The long rows of harvested corn stretch on to the tree line at the edge of the horizon.
The cumulonimbus clouds hang heavy in the sky with a gap in the middle. A hole through which the sun may beam.
A landscape.
Hues of Blues. Greens. Yellows.
Another look.
A meadow in harvest. A cow in the distance. Chewing grass. A barn. The morning mist. Crows circling overhead. Grass fires.
Another look.
A humble road. Stretched long. Stretched straight. Serving the occasional car. Peasants. Couples.
A resort village. A steeple. A country fair.
The camera tilts down. Pans right. Pushes forward. Dollies right.
Through the rusted barbed wire.
Of the concentration camp.
Ten years after the liberation.
Struthof. Oranienburg, Auschwitz.
Neuengamme. Belsen. Ravensbruck. Dachau.
Names on maps and guidebooks.
The blood has dried.
The tongues have gone silent.
A strange grass covers the path.
No current through the wires.
No visitor but the camera.
The camps lie silent. Still. Deteriorating.
Flashback to 1933.
The machine goes into action.
The camps are built like stadiums or hotels.
Businessmen. Estimates. Competitive bids. "And no doubt a bribe or two."
With architectural styles. Alpine. Garage. Japanese. Simple.
Gates meant to be passed through.
Only once.
While a German worker. A Jewish student in Amsterdam. A merchant in Krakow. A schoolgirl in Bordeaux.
Go about their business. Live their lives. Innocently. Not knowing this place is being built for them.
Hundreds of miles away.
The quarters are now ready.
All that is missing is them.
Seized.
From Warsaw. Lodz. Prague. Brussels. Athens. Zagreb. Odessa. Rome.
Interned at Pithiviers. Captured in Vel-d'Hiv. Rounded up in Compiegne.
Real footage. Of real people. Boarding real trains. Wearing real stars.
Hundreds of people crammed into a car.
The doors sealed. No windows. No light. No day. No night.
Hunger. Thirst. Suffocation. Madness.
The train arrives in the night and fog.
Today.
In color.
On the same tracks.
The grass grows. The weeds grow. The sun shines. The tracks rust.
Then.
In black and white.
The people. Stripped. Shaved. Numbered. Tattooed. Given ranks.
The blue strip. The red triangle. The blue triangle.
Criminals made masters.
The Kapo. A common criminal. Now in charge of the barracks. Allowed to take out his caprice on the inmates.
A look at the inmates lives. While they were there. Sleeping in bunks. Several to a bed. On top of one another. With long rows of latrines.
Some taken to work where they assembled things.
Some taken to clinics where experiments were conducted on them.
Some taken to the Kapo's personal brothel for his own pleasure.
The same number never returned as which left.
Surprises at the camps.
A symphony orchestra. A zoo. Greenhouses nurturing rare plants. Goethe's oak at Buchenwald.
The commandant and his wife living respectably in the nice house nearby.
The human spirit.
Inmates making things. Writing. Praying. Sharing. Caring. Organizing.
Fingernail scratches in the concrete ceiling.
The images in this film are among the most graphic you will ever see.
They are real.
The director had nightmares during preproduction.
The writer, himself a survivor of the camp, grew sick to his stomach and stopped writing.
The footage includes the Allies' efforts to clean up.
When the Allies liberated the camps they discovered for the first time what was going on.
They were surprised by what they saw.
None of the Nazis accepted responsibility. And it includes the workers stating repeatedly, "I am not responsible."
We know now about the concentration camps, but the people did not know at the time.
The camps were discovered at the end of the war.
One of Hitler's weapon was the secrecy. He worked to ensure that no one knew what was going on. So that no one would try to stop him through public sentiment or outcry.
Another of his weapons was the weapon of fear.
Families did not know where their loved ones had gone.
They simply disappeared.
Into the night.
And fog.
No comments:
Post a Comment