Night and Fog

Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard, 1956) is Alain Resnais's landmark documentary about the Nazi death camps, available to watch online on iFILM. In thirty-two minutes, Resnais cuts between wartime archival footage and his own colour images of the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek, filmed a decade after liberation.

The narration was written by Jean Cayrol, a poet who survived Mauthausen. His words do not declaim or moralise. They trace, quietly, how a system of mass murder was assembled piece by piece through administrative logic — and how ordinary people slotted into it. The film was completed the same year as the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; the Cannes jury wanted to show it in competition, but the French government blocked the screening over a single frame showing a French gendarmerie officer.

Universities still teach it, and no documentary made since has really replaced it. Thirty-two minutes is not a short amount of time to spend with this material. Stream Night and Fog (1956) online on iFILM.