Night and Fog

Short as it is, Night and Fog has major contradictions that might be advanced as criticisms, but might also explain its extraordinary power. Its impetus had come from history and politics, a drive to record the evils of Nazism, and the film is determined to anchor the camps in that historical reality. But there is another level of reality that Cayrol’s poetic text aims to delineate: the veritable alternative world of the camps, a completely new form of existence on the edge of death. The text, spoken at Resnais’s insistence without emphasis or emotion, is undoubtedly one of the reasons that we are moved so directly. And much of the credit for this power may be due to Marker, a longtime friend and collaborator of Resnais’s. At the time, Marker worked at Éditions du Seuil, the company that published Cayrol, and when Cayrol delivered his first version of the commentary, far too long and almost unrelated to the images, it was to Marker that Resnais turned to produce a text that would play in counterpoint to the images. This text was then rewritten by Cayrol, but there is no doubt that the astonishing rhythm of words and images owes a lot to Marker’s intervention.