The title "Night and Fog" comes from a decree on the massacre of Jews promulgated by Hitler during World War II-"Night and Fog Decree"-people who were secretly arrested or killed seem to suddenly disappear in "Night and Fog." The family will not receive any news. Therefore, it is easy to know that the film is exposing various terrorist atrocities in Nazi concentration camps. As a representative of the French New Wave, director Allen Renai insisted on looking back and reflecting on World War II, and subjectively thinking about reality. In "Night and Fog", you can also see the director's own distinctive personal style and lens language. It is not difficult to think of his representative works such as "Love in Hiroshima" and "Last year I was in Marienbad" shot in the later stage. Throughout the film, the director uses black and white and color to distinguish between history and the present, but has repeatedly used cross-montage to connect history and the present. Black and white represents depression, just like all the heaviness of history; color represents beauty, reflecting the rare tranquility of the moment. The two extremely contrasting colors in the picture show this restrained resentment and sorrow under the tranquility. The cross-cutting method makes it difficult for the audience to distinguish between the past and the present. The past is a frozen photo or character, and now it is a flowing scene and architecture, which seems to be contradictory, but it actually makes the audience think more deeply, "The war is over, but Open your eyes forever". The next step is to analyze the audiovisual language of the film from some specific shots in the film. At the beginning of the film, the first thing that catches the audience’s eyes is a colorful and peaceful view of the grassland. But as the director shifts the lens, we see the cold barbed wire. While the lens is shifted, a light music is played together with music. Contrary to the ridiculous peace and tranquility, then a narration with a hint of poetry came slowly. The next few empty shots are almost always shaken or moved from the peaceful landscape to the picture full of barbed wire. A calm voice of narration came from the background sound: "The blood has dried up, the mouthpiece has been silent, and the camera is the only visitor here." As soon as the screen turned, we saw the uniform movements of the soldiers, excerpted from the time when the war was launched in "Victory of Will" A series of shots, all in black and white, with a strong sense of rhythm and full of beating music, seems to mock the beginning of the war between this marionette-like man and this horror game-like war. After many Jews boarded the train, an interesting cross-montage appeared. In the black and white picture, the carriages running in the night and fog received the colorful picture of the train track, accompanied by a rhetorical narration: "Today, on the same railroad track The sun is shining, and we are walking along them, what are we looking for? Is it the trace left by the fallen corpse when the car door is opened?" A railroad track changed the destiny of countless people. Life and death are only in that line. between. The most prominent feature of the film in the use of lenses is the use of close-ups. When displaying people’s clothing in the concentration camp, various close-ups are used to give people a concise and powerful sensory stimulation; in the display of pots full of skulls, beaches full of corpses, bulldozers become "dead pushers" and skinned The feet and various death conditions challenge the audience's senses, allowing the audience to face death and fear, history and war. Speaking of close-ups, in the second half of the film, there are a series of cuttings of piles of daily necessities, until a shot of a pile of women’s hair swaying into a mountain of hair appears, the hair is horrified, and the audience learns that these hairs are all woven into a bundle. Another bundle of cloth, followed by bones and corpses used as fertilizer and soap, and pictures made of skin that can be guessed from the narration through the lens, successive close-ups stimulate every nerve in the audience , After all, how many people died? Or one should ask, how many people are still alive? Secondly, the film's use of sound is also full of ingenuity. In addition to the soundtrack mentioned above, the director also deliberately cut into the scene of many people talking, but the sound of the same period was muted, and only the background music was used for sound and picture counterpoint. Perhaps in the eyes of the director, all language is pale and weak. The court defense at the end of the film is the most exciting. We look at the hideous faces and closed mouths, but only hear the narration accompanied by the soundtrack. Jing said, "'I have no responsibility', the prisoner said;'I have no responsibility', the officer said;'I have no responsibility', then whose responsibility is this". Generally speaking, the footage of the film always directly shows the horrors of concentration camps, such as people holding the heads of others and transporting them to designated locations without emotion; but at the same time, they are full of restraint, not deliberately sensational or emotional. Guidance only uses the lens to present the most realistic picture; at the same time, the poetic narration is accurate and powerful but constantly asks the audience, history, and today.
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