***Some of the formatting has been messed up due to its html transition. As a result the footnotes, citing sources and quotations have ALL been lost and it would take extensive reworking to redo them. No plagiarism is intended. I think the cases in which other peoples work are cited are pretty evident and a bibliography does follow***, but if you would like an original copy, one can be requested from the writer at di901@hotmail.com***
Nuit et Brouillard is primarily a film which relies on spatial constructs to convey its message. The film’s relationship to temporality, has played a fundamental role also. Space and time both work within the composition of the film, and in terms of itself as a representation of memory having taken place over a significant period of time.
The film’s relationship to space and time was entrenched in its make up before it even began production. The film was commissioned ten years after World War Two officially ended, and the doors of the concentration camps were closed. The concept of the film was to mark this anniversary, and also to make use of the archival footage which was available. The origins of this material included such prestigious sources as the Auschwitz Museum. In terms of accessibility, the film came up against opposition before it had even begun production. The French authorities wanted to censor much of the film‘s proposed content, due to the films perceived anti-political nature. Permission was eventually granted to use unused footage from the SCA, which was to prove central to the film‘s final composition. On the twenty fourth of May 1955, Alain Resnais signed a contract which, due to subsidy demands, had a deadline of December that same year. Undertaking the considerable task, constructing a film from the archival footage relating to the Holocaust was destined to be challenging even without the added time constraints.
Resnais had been approached by the Producers, and had agreed to direct the film on two conditions; the first being that the film would not simply be a vehicle to commemorate the dead, but rather that it would convey a more comprehensive message. By communicating the harsh reality of the event, Resnais hoped that the events which occurred would act as a deterrent and warning for other wars which were taking place at that time, in particular, the Algerian war. Resnais believed that by depicting the facts through a careful spatial construction, and handling of the temporal factors which resulted from the span of time that had passed since the events themselves, the film would prevent similar atrocities from recurring. According to Ewout van der Knaap, due to its symbolic nature, the film was essentially
“a product of its time and situation”.
In other words, its relationship to the events and the time which had elapsed since their occurrence was such that the film captured a specific response to the events during that moment in time. The second condition was that van der Knaap would involve a scriptwriter with first hand knowledge of the Holocaust, one who could give a personal account of the events, while remaining somewhat impartial and objective with regard to the brutality of the affair. The writer Resnais had in mind was Jean Cayrol, a poet and survivor, who had been imprisoned in the Mauthausen camp during the war. Cayrol had written a poem entitled “Poemes de la nuit et brouillard” following his release from the camp, which Resnais believed captured the essence of the message he wanted his film to convey. Cayrol was to undertake the role of scriptwriter, while the professional actor, Michel Bouquet was to act as the films narrator and the eyes of the viewer in revisiting the remains of the camps. Together Cayrols text and Bouquet’s voice were to guide the audience on their journey back and
forth through time.
Nuit et Brouillard was the first film about the Holocaust of its kind and despite its relaying of factual historical events, Resnais rejected the label “documentary” from the film’s onset in favour of the term “non-fiction”. This was, in part, due to the heinous nature of the atrocities, which Resnais believed were too appalling to comprehensively grasp their total nature, and therefore, to document. Resnais preferred to represent and reflect these events through the archival footage, to the best of his ability. He would also require the viewers to interrogate their own responses to the film.
In a dialogue on the construction of film form, Thomas Elsaesser said,
“Different film forms would seem to be determined by a filmmaker’s ability to construct space and time, the two dimensions simultaneously present in filmic representation.”
Resnais believed that the way in which he intended to go about representing the Holocaust by means of these two aspects of space and time, was to be so dedicated to the truth of the events themselves, that the term documentary would be ill-defined. Resnais believed that the danger in calling his film a documentary, was that it would give the film an exploitative predisposition and Resnais was determined that the archival footage that had been made available to him would not be used in a voyeuristic manner, an inclination which was entirely possible given the filmmakers distance both emotionally, and in terms of time, from the event. His use of Cayrol, an individual who had experienced the Holocaust personally, would help prevent this.
The poets intent was to convey Resnais’ message through a system of “movere” that is appealing to the emotions, alongside the system of “probare”, which is to teach and provide evidence. It comes as a surprise then, given the lengths the filmmaker had taken, that the film was widely understood to have communicated its message through the medium of horror.
In Margarethe Von Trotta’s 1981 film, Die Bleierne Zeit, the character of Gudrun Enslinn, a terrorist, is shown as a child watching Nuit et Brouillard. Her reaction to the images she sees on screen is to vomit. Indeed Cayrol himself was taken ill the first time he viewed the footage. Van der Knaap says that
“This criticism fails to take into account the time in which the film was made.”
What van der Knaap is saying is that after a period of time has passed, in this case ten years, viewers should be able to view the images with an more detached, objective perspective, then if the film had been made in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. In addition, Resnais directed that the text be as unemotional as possible, without being detached, and that Bouquet should deliver his voiceover in a neutral tone.
The space within film itself, was extremely multifaceted, it consisted of a complex juxtaposition of images from both the past (that is during the holocaust) and then the present (ten years on). The images of the past were predominantly stills, some of which
had been taken from and inspired by Wormser and Michel’s anthology of pictures commemorating the Holocaust for, “Tragedie de la Deportation”. Despite the intensity of these images however, Resnais found the book lacking somewhat, as it offered only a French perspective of the events. Resnais would attempt to show a more balanced perspective, in order that the film could convey a more universal message.
In terms of the narrative qualities of the film, the combination of black and white stills, colour images and travelling shots within the film, allow the viewer to consciously make the journey through time and space. In Bernard F. Dick’s analysis of film narrative, Anatomy of Film, his investigation into understanding film as a medium, caused him to question the fundamental difference between fiction (by which he means the literary fiction) and film. Through his close examination, he concluded, that by recognizing the process through which conflict is operated, in the narrative mode, such a distinction can readily be found. The conflict he refers to varies greatly, from that which occurs between the characters as individuals, arising from a particular situation or misunderstanding to that which exists within society as a whole. Irrespective of the nature of this conflict, (in this instance, the Holocaust) Dick says its presence is inevitable in a “good” narrative. In the case of the movie, he says this conflict is presented to the viewer audiovisually, that is, the action unfolds before the viewer to be seen, heard and witnessed as though a voyeur. In the case of the text, what is read must be processed and imagined; temporal references such as “meanwhile” or “at the same time” are necessary to relay a crossing over of time, such as if two separate events are taking place concurrently. Through cross
cutting, fades, blackouts and various other cinematic devices, the viewer can recognise this process for themselves, without disrupting the seamlessness of the film itself.
A good example of this system in practice, occurs in the 1981 film Blind Chance, in which the male protagonist’s life follows three different outcomes after he collides with another man on his way to the train. The viewer is given a privileged view of how his life differs depending on how he handles this seemingly insignificant event. Later, films such as Sliding Doors and Run Lola Run, follow a similar pattern, which see the central characters following different paths simultaneously. How the viewer recognises this is due to the sophisticated editing techniques used, which they have been conditioned to understand. For example in the opening scene of Sliding Doors, the doors of the train close and we fade out to a repeat of the previous scene. The distinction is further highlighted later in the film when the character, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, cuts her hair in one of her parallel lives. This is in order that the viewer can instantly recognise which version of the character they are watching. This device further underpins the visual contrast necessary for the viewer to make the transition alongside the central character. Recent films such as The Butterfly Effect and Donnie Darko journey through time and space in a similar way, using cinematic effects to signify the changeover. In Butterfly Effect, the protagonist travels back and forth in time to alter history and determine the consequence its amendment has on the present. While the alternate lives he occupies are not parallel, (that is they do not occur at the same time) similar devices are used are to signify the crossing through time. The images on screen shake rapidly from side to side,
up and down, although the camera itself does not move. This device was created in post-production, and its presence indicates the transition through spaces of time.
Dick’s investigation furthermore revealed that the medium of film, uniquely allows time itself to be interchangeable. A minute on screen can condense a year in real time and vice versa. Perhaps the best known example of this occurs in Eisenstein’s Potemkin, where time is distorted to stress the brutality of the massacre on the Odessa people. The scene which takes place on the steps is slowed down, so that the viewer can take in every blow and every slaughter. Had the sequence been left in real time, it would have been over almost as soon as it began, and the viewer would not have been allowed the opportunity to identify with the victims. It is this facility which allows Resnais to alternate between images of the concentration camps as they were during the Holocaust and how they are ten years after the event has occurred. Both Eisenstein and Resnais employ this technique with the same intention, that is to emphasize the horrors which occurred, and prevent them from happening again.
At times the transition from past to present and vice versa is deliberately jarring, to emphasize the break in time, such as when the narrator describes how on his way to the camp he inspects the railway lines for any clue of the events which occurred. But there are none. In Nuit et Brouillard, the atrocities have already taken place ten years previously, and cannot be undone. What is unsettling is how quickly, and relatively effortlessly, the traces of the events, like its victims were buried. The remains of the past
have been physically wiped out in this instance. Looking for an indication of the past along the tracks is pointless. It is the film in itself, which unearths the brutal history of the now seemingly banal land. Resnais uses the interchanging clips and images between the past and present as his instruments to do this. The way in which Resnais alternates the clips and images, is a form of de-fragmentation, and he de-fragments the memory of the events, and reconstructs them in the same way. His background as an editor and short filmmaker, go some way toward explaining his unusual construction of space within the film. His early work featured artists of the Cubist movement, such as Van Gogh, and the infamous Picasso portrait of Guernica, in which a scene of a town, was bombed by Nazi’s sent by Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Like Nuit et Brouillard, the painting centred around a particular war as symbol for a larger message.
In the opening scene, set in 1955, the viewer is presented with a sharp contrast, between the natural environment and the man-made barbed wire fences. This initial image suggests that the intrusion of man, at least in this instance has had a negative impact on the surrounding landscape. This suggestion serves as a device by Resnais to foreshadow the grave mistakes made during the Holocaust, and what must be done to prevent them from happening again in the future. Music composed by Johannes Eisler, plays over the scene, and throughout the film. Eisler, like Cayrol, was Jewish and an anti-fascist, and the score for the film had been composed before its conception. Its presence serves to give the images structure and pace. Indeed Cayrol worked closely with Resnais’ assistant Chris Marker, to keep the text in harmony with the rhythm supplied by Eisler. As the
images shift for the first time to the time of the Holocaust, the occasion is marked by a change in the tone of the music. The viewer is presented with the rise of Nazi ideology, images of the Swastika, and the Hitler salute, while the voiceover explains how the concentration camps were assembled and why, “The architects calmly design doorways to be entered only once”. There is an awareness of inevitable doom from the films outset. The viewer knows what will happen in these camps. Bouquet begins to mention individual people who were victims of the holocaust, Burger, Stern, Shmulski and Anne, each with a familiar story, in order that the viewer might identify with these individuals on a personal level, rather then simply considering the Jewish people as a whole. As the first trains are filled and sent to the camp, the viewer too goes on a journey through time, into and out of the past.
Next, Resnais uses a clever device, of placing an image outside of its original context, and returning it later in the film, to within its initial framework. An extreme close up on a man’s eyes is shown as the narrator discusses his arrival into the camp. The viewer, led by the narrator, might assume that these are the eyes of a shocked man who is arriving in “another planet”, and have been placed at this point in the film to act as a physical manifestation on screen of the eyes of the viewer, taking in the scene upon entering the camp, of the skeletal victims. Indeed the way in which these images have been put together by Resnais, seem upon first view to be perfectly logical. Later in the film, this image of the man’s eyes is used again. This time the camera pulls back to reveal the image in context, we see the scene which surrounds him. The man is in the camp
hospital, where the Nazi experiments are carried out surrounded by other men and women sharing the same expression, and the viewer is told “All deportees came to look alike”. The idea that what had previously been presented as a face undergoing an extreme reaction of shock, came to be a permanent fixture on the faces of the victims which serves to underpin the severity of the trauma experience, and the way in which Resnais enforces this image through a substitution exchange of context in time is skilful.
In another scene which is set in 1955, the camera pans down one of the now vacated dormitories. This panning shot serves to act as the eyes of the viewer walking down the empty corridor. Bouquet describes the physical conditions of the concrete beds as being cold and uncomfortable, and also the fear which the prisoners were constantly living in, even in rest, with the knowledge that they may be removed at any time and disposed of. This description serves to conjure up imaginings of these conditions from times past, in the mind of the observer. At this point, Resnais reverts back to a time when the dormitories were occupied, and the viewer no longer has to imagine the circumstances, but can see for themselves. By first having the viewer imagine, and then confirming their imaginings of the past, by representing the images on screen, Resnais sends a more unsettling message then had the older images been shown initially. Resnais is making optimum use of the images through his assembling of space and construction of time, to get his message across, in as powerful a way as possible. The experimental filmmaker Stanley Brakhage, who made Window Water Baby Moving, a film centred around the birth of his wife, and The Act Of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, a documentation
following several autopsies, which believed that there was no substitute for seeing the act itself first hand, even if it was through the camera lens. The viewer imagines the scene as it was in their mind’s eye, and then their imagining is confirmed.
In stark contrast to the enclosed prison of the camps, was the outside free world, just a short distance away. This was the world the deportees had been forcefully removed from, a place which must have seemed a distant memory. The disconnection between the two worlds, that is the space within the fences, and the space outside of them, is key. Resnais uses this separation in space to emphasize the desperation of the situation, when he shows the images through the fences of the outside world which the victims can clearly see and are constantly aware of. The images of failed escape attempts, dead bodies hanging from the fences show that while hope was still alive, and the free world was so close, it only served to further torment the inhabitants who could see the free world, but were not a part of it. A similar approach is taken in John Boyne’s 2006 novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, where the son of the Commandant, Bruno, plays through the fence with the young camp deportee Shmuel. The novel seems to share the same moral as Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard when in its closing lines, it says in a mordant tone, “of course this all happened a long time ago, and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age.” Boyne’s message, like Resnais’ serves as a warning to prevent similar atrocities from recurring. The message of the film is that it calls upon its audience to draw “contemporary parallels”.
As a result of this audience reaction, the film became a “part of the cultural memory” immediately in Germany and France, despite major censorship from the authorities due its potentially politically damaging nature. Later, the French government removed these restrictions, and imposed regular screenings of the film in order to prevent anti-Semitism from returning. The nature of the film, and its short running time made it accessible to both commercial and art house cinema and it became popular among students for its complex grouping of images from past and present. Nuit et Brouillard was however, met with fierce opposition from a surprising source. Certain groups within the Jewish community were critical about the fact that they felt not enough had been done to highlight the specific Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazi’s. Resnais was accused of “Unjewishing the Holocaust”. While Resnais’ film does use the Holocaust as an example to convey a larger message, the assessment fails to take into account that specifically, the images of the victims on screen are plainly Jewish. The viewer knows from the outset that Cayrol’s text is discussing Nazi Germany, as they have seen the swastikas and the Nazi salute, they see the star of David on the prisoners and bodies, and are aware of the history of the camps. Even the only moderately-educated viewer is presumably aware of these signs. So, considering this verification, if it is not the lack of Jewish victims portrayed on screen that the Jewish people objected to, it must be the universalisation of the events. While Resnais believed his message of the Holocaust as a cautionary tale was an important one, the Jewish people felt that such a message was a disservice to the victims, and believed the film ought to straightforwardly commemorate their lives. As a result the Jewish people deemed Nuit et Brouillard to be a historical falsification. But at no point,
did Resnais claim to be creating a comprehensive account of the Holocaust. Indeed he was aware that in creating a straightforward film about the Holocaust he was, in essence required to make the unspeakable, spoken; the unimaginable, imagined and the unconscious, conscious. This was why he was so opposed to the term documentary. Resnais film was not a documentary, it was a representation of the event, with a broader message. Irrespective, it was vital that the account he gave was an accurate one.
Memory was a theme in Resnais’ work, both leading up to Nuit et Brouillard, and particularly after it, in films such as Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), in which a French actress sleeps with a Japanese man, and is reminded of her first love. Over the course of the film she recalls the romance which occurred during World War Two, and the film concludes with her falling in love with the Japanese man. Resnais message is clear: To effectively live in the present one must learn from the past. The memory theme also continued into his later films Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Muriel (1963), and Providence (1977).
Aside from photographs and film segments, after a significant period of time (in this instance-ten years) has passed, human recollection must be drawn upon to piece events together. Despite the meticulous organisation and logging of the Holocaust implementers, it would have been impossible to chronicle every thought, occurrence and sentiment, especially those of the deportees themselves, as they were largely viewed by the authorities to be subhuman and therefore, void of any relevant emotion. The mystique
surrounding the events of the Holocaust has led to numerous inaccuracies, and conspiracy theories, the most astonishing of which, being that it never happened. This theory serves to underline the importance of memory in the preservation of such a prolific historical event. Accurate recollection of the events was vital to the construction of Nuit et Brouillard in terms of staying true to the message Resnais wanted to convey. It has also facilitated the films longevity as an educational tool today. Russian Filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky said;
“Time and memory merge into each other; they are like the two sides of a medal. It is obvious enough that without Time, memory cannot exist either. But memory is something so complex that no list of all its attributes could define the totality of the impressions through which it affects us.”
The problem lies with the question of faithful representation, whereby one researcher looking to represent the events of, for example, the Holocaust looks back to an older representation for its information. Roland Barthes asked, “Can analogical representation (the copy) produce true systems of signs, and not merely simple agglutinations of symbols?“ After a period of time has passed, if somewhere along the line, memory is inconsistent with fact, the result will be that the events become misrepresented, and historical fact becomes intermingled with myth. Andre Bazin placed major emphasis on the importance of faithful representation in the reproduction of a pre-existing reality. He said;
“Memory is the most faithful of films… but who does not see the difference between a memory and the objective image that gives it eternal concrete form”
He believed that the image presented on screen needed to remain true to the reality of the event. Indeed, authors such as Primo Levi had a very negative view on the reliability of memory in terms of the Holocaust. As Nuit et Brouillard was the first film of its kind relating directly to the Holocaust, the importance of accurate recollection is of utmost consequence. The matter was further complicated by Resnais desire to represent the events which could not easily be articulated. To make the unspoken, spoken. As Bill Nichols puts it
“Representation turns to those vital signs that provide an oblique index of what cannot be shown directly, like the unconscious”.
Envisioning a Holocaust film today, after a substantial period of time has passed, the images of starving deportees, in their blue and white tattered clothes going about camp life seem passé and obvious, and it is at this point that these images run the risk of diluting the magnitude of the events themselves. Films such as Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun and Hogan’s Heroes all dramatize the Holocaust in similar ways. They rely on sentimental and at times sensationalised imagery to manipulate the viewers response. For example, Schindler’s List received criticism for its clichéd imagery. Conceivably the way in which Resnais wished to impart his message, was not so much about the images in themselves as memory, but rather as James E. Young suggests, about the way in which the narrator relays them, and so “videotaping the Holocaust survivors was not about documenting the experience or presenting the facts, but rather to document the witness as he makes his
testimony and is meaning and understanding of the events through the way he presents his testimony.” This highlights the fact that as such, the images do not stand alone to communicate Resnais message, they are each shaped by the commentary which is applied to them through Bouquet’s voiceover, the framework in which Resnais has presented them (that is camera angles, running order etc), and the context in which they are viewed by the audience. Barthes in his study of the photographic message said
“ The structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure.”
To understand clearly what Barthes is trying to say, the way in which Resnais communicates his message through the images and the voiceover must be examined. Both mediums can be looked at as relating to Sausseure’s concept of the signifier and the signified. The “signifier“, is represented by the images themselves, and is communicated by means of the voiceover (the “signified“). Together, they work to create the “Sign”, which is the message which Resnais wishes to convey to the viewer. Barthes gives the example of an advertisement of a product, in which the message that the product manufacturer wishes to imply to the viewer is entirely intentional, and carefully constructed: i.e. how the product is placed on the screen, what surrounds that product, what is said about, or implied about the use of the product, and how the product is framed all give the viewer a carefully constructed image of that product via its spatial construct. While this construction is more subtle in the case of Nuit et Brouillard, its incidence is no less prevalent. Barthes believed that the message could be broken into two distinct sections, which together formed an interrelationship to produce an overall meaning. The denoted message, is understood to be the straightforward basic image in
itself, for example a basket of heads. This is what the observer can see happening superficially in the space within the frame. While the connoted message, that is, “the imposition of a second meaning on the photographic message” is more complex. Barthes alleged that in reading an image, the sociological and cultural context of the viewer would alter their perspective of the image:
“Thanks to its code of connotation, the reading of the photograph is thus always historical; it depends on the readers knowledge, just as though it were a matter of a real language [langue] intelligible only if one has learned the signs…this depends on (sic.)…a certain knowledge on the readers part or if one prefers from the readers cultural situation”
So an objective American audience would have a very different analysis of Nuit et Brouillard then a more subjective German audience, just as the 1955 audience would have a completely different understanding to an audience who have experienced a break in time from the event in 2008. The interpretation and understanding of the image as a result of social situation of the viewer make up part of the connoted message, while the influences of the filmmaker have an inevitable impact also. This is the way in which Resnais has constructed the images in Nuit et Brouillard; how they morph between the decades, his contrast between colour images and black and white, and the way the tracking shots work to give the viewer a feeling of walking through the space. But, in terms of gaining a degree of control over the responses of the viewer, to the images, it is arguably Cayrol’s text and Bouquet’s voiceover that have the most perceptible impact. This voiceover, relates back to Barthes concept of the “relay-text”, which he believed to
be crucial to the deconstruction of the film’s message. The narrator remains invisible throughout the film, not even referring to himself in the first person until the final sequence of the film, when he says “At the moment I am talking to you”, van der Knaap says this substantiation of the individual as narrator, aids to bridge the gap between the images shot in 1955 and the Holocaust.
While not a tangible presence in terms of space, the existence of the voiceover, is fundamental to its translation from image to message. Barthes says of this text, it “becomes very important in film, where dialogue functions not simply as elucidation, but really does advance the action by setting out, in the sequence of messages, meanings that are not to be found in itself.” Several times throughout the film, Cayrol’s text employs a linguistic device identified by van der Knaap as praeteritio whereby he first claims that he cannot say something, as it is too inexpressible for words; “But one can say nothing more…” and “it is useless to describe what went on in these cells…”, but he follows these phrases by doing just that, and describing exactly what has happened. Consequently the concept attached to the obligation to remember, and the impossibility to do so is formed.
Van der Knaap says that it is during these instances of voiceover exposition, that image and text must work contingently with one another to convey the message which Resnais wishes to impart. For example in the scene in which we see how the Nazi’s made use of everything, and wasted nothing, including human remains; skin, bones, skulls and
tattoos, Cayrol specifically tells the viewer the things they were used for. We are told the skin is made into soap, and we see the skin and the soap. The effect this has, is to reinforce to the viewer the extent to which the Nazi’s were willing to go to serve their cause. The score also has a powerful effect on manipulating the viewers reaction to an image. For example at the beginning of the film, the first time the images change into the past, there is a distinct transformation in the tone of the music, which signifies to the viewer there is a change in the tone of the images. By guiding the viewer in this way, Resnais can divert the emotions of the viewer to an extent. Independently, neither the image itself nor the voiceover or music, would have the same effectiveness as they have working together. As Barthes puts it,
“The text produces an entirely new signified, which is retroactively projected into the image.” and “The image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which are structurally parasitic on the image”
Resnais’ meticulous construction of images and auditory processes serve to convey his message through spatial constructs.
The scenes of the gas chambers are serve best to encapsulate the message Resnais wanted to convey, due to their profound relation to time. The scene opens with the
deportees being separated into two lines, one with those who can serve a purpose to the Nazi’s, such as labourers or whores, and the other with those who were of no use to them. The gas chambers are a common symbol today of everything which was inhumane in the concentration camps. Deportees were stripped and tricked into entering calmly, believing the chamber to be a shower room, and were then gassed to death, while the Nazi’s could
observe through grates. In the scene in Nuit et Brouillard, Resnais turns the tables, so that the viewer is now the voyeur. The viewer must ask numerous moral questions of themselves: Is it right to watch? Is it necessary to see? And most importantly; How can they prevent this from happening again? As the images revert to 1955, Bouquet’s voiceover narrates over the images of scratch marks in the ceiling which the prisoners desperately clawed at in an attempt to escape. As the viewer explores the camp, these scratchings are the only evidence from the past, in the present. This assertion is a powerful statement from Resnais that while most of the marks from the Holocaust have faded, when one looks hard enough they can still be found today, even after time has passed. As Bouquet says in the final scene, “War has dozed off, one eye is still open.”
It is only through looking back reflectively, and investigating what has happened in the past and why, that we can prevent history from repeating itself, and this is the point Resnais’ film is trying to make. The fact that Nuit et Brouillard still maintains its cultural cache today is testament to Resnais’ impeccable construction of spatiality, even in the wake of more contemporary cinematic depictions, such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist. The film’s timelessness, and composition of still images, alongside the moving picture which encompasses both the period during the events, and a retrospective view of them, combine to create a cinematic masterpiece. Francois Truffaut considered Nuit et Brouillard the greatest film ever made, and while this remains a matter of opinion, Michael Darlow’s assessment, that Nuit et Brouillard is the film about the Holocaust, is perhaps not an overly ambitious one.
Nuit et Brouillard, was originally conceptualised to make use the footage which was available, in order to mark the anniversary of the end of the second World War. In the hands of Alain Resnais, the film took on a more universal intimation then its initial proposal. Resnais employment of several key processes in constructing the film, allow him to seamlessly alternate between the past and the present. Nuit et Brouillard’s careful construction invites the viewer to examine their own responses to the images from the past and the present. In doing so, Resnais is asking the question how can it be prevented from happening again? The critical approach to the question of accurate representation in relation to memory, serves to highlight Resnais’ opposition to the film as a comprehensive film about the Holocaust. Resnais’ film, while presenting the actions of the Holocaust was not seeking to commemorate its victims, but rather using the consequences of the war as a metaphor for a larger message. The interrelationship between the images and the text, serve as mediums through which Resnais can convey his message. The film’s relationship of space and time to its narrative is thus evident in these aspects of Nuit et Brouillard. The film relies on its spatial and temporal structure to communicate Resnais’ message.
Bibliography
**To follow**
