Its second is made on arrival in the night & fog
Alais Resnais made Night & Fog in 1956, long past the events depicted and longer than the rise of German cinema. Some of its shots resemble those of previous German genres, and therefore have haunting intertextual implications underneath its form that is effective in its own power . Rather than being devalued after technological reproduction as Benjamin predicts, the 'here and now' is therefore made more effective by the usage of memes.
One of such intertextual examples is the shot of one of the trains slowly arriving in a concentration camp amid night and fog, at gunpoint of a row of Stahlhelm-clad German soldiers. The low-key tone, the high contrast, and the diagonal composition full of powerful parallel lines on the train and the cold formation of the soldiers makes the scene depressing and shocking at first glance, setting a solemn mood for the viewer. The fixed camera makes the shot very stable, and all those graphical elements combined suggest stony order at the camps. All those effects are magnified compared to the similar previous shots of trains. In previous shots, however, the trains are travelling at bright day on curved paths and even with similar low-key shadows, make the scenes therefore less grave .This montage marks a climax of gravity at this night shot with such subtle alarms.
The subjects of this shot are made discomforting, most notably with lighting and with memes. The lighting is peculiar, with only one hard light source from just outside the right side of the frame (ie on the side of the German soldiers) made soft by heavy fog, yet it still creates a concentrated reflection on the trains. On close examination and imagination, one may intellectually understand it as suggesting absolute power of the Germans over the Jews in the train (whose invisibility adds suspension), yet without such rumination he may find the unusual, unnatural light coming from out of sight disturbing. The intense fog further alienates the viewer from the scene by multiple means: it blurs the soldiers farther from the camera, and it reflects the light on its own, becoming a bright mid -ground on which the soldiers become hauntingly dark,indiscernible silhouettes, and that also increases the contrast in black and white. Now the hazy and shadowy soldiers are alienated from the viewer, both unrelatable and formidable.
The memes help with the alienation effect, showing the effectiveness of the 'here and now' of the film. The Stahlhelm helmets should have become iconic after its extended usage since WWI, while their geometric aesthetics trace back to the Tartans (according to the Soviet nationalist film 'Alexander Nevsky'). Their unnatural geometric squareness that totally does not resemble the human head should look alien in itself. They are made more effective as a meme, toward an audience probably on the Allied side, eg France in which this film was made – the Stahlhelm should be understood to be mean, indifferent, fearsome, and German – especially in the 1950s, when the Germans have just been defeated and tried as evil. That is the 'here and now' of the age of its airing ,and contemporary audience should even see stronger such connotations after Stahlhelms' wide-spread appearance in pop culture, egStar Wars . The soldiers' rifles are another meme. Protruding out of the less unfamiliar human bodies as straight lines on their own, they contribute to the parallel composition suggesting terrible order. (They may also evoke the image of the penis and related violence, if its fear is really part of human instincts.) The modern understanding of them as weapons add up to that effect, and after decades of reproduction the image would arouse similar dread in the contemporary 'here and now', though the implication of an orderly massacre like those depicted in 19th century Realist paintings may be less clear. The effects of the two images are composites of appeals to instincts and memes.
There are mechanical nuance to the scene, too, which do not focus on stimulating emotion. This scene features the train coming to the camera, while previous ones all have the trains away from it. That makes a subtle transition bringing viewers into the camps, like a division of acts in theatre, to make them submerge into what will come. Meanwhile, certain critics may argue that the leftward motion in both scenes is a meme and make viewers uneasy.
Nevertheless, viewers depend on the voiceover narration to rationally understand the scene. The narration is a continuation of the sentence from the last scene 'Death makes it first cut' accompanied by a distant, tiny figure falling from the train. The sentence here suggests that the soldiers with their rifles would kill more Jews from the train. The rational understanding give meaning to the composition in which the soldiers hold a minority of the frame – they are made less visible and their actions, less certain, and the uncertainty installs fear just as the 'Night & Fog' decree focuses on making opponents of Nazi mysteriously disappear. Yet the previous composition certainly suggests littleness of the fallen Jew, so the vanishing point is conveniently shifted to the other side.
The calm tone and opacity of the voiceover is ambiguous or even suspicious. With all aforementioned manipulations, the film certainly does not try to appeal to the intellect at this point or to buffer strong emotions from the viewer. One explanation is that it is trying to suggest intellect and authority to convince the viewer of its truth and therefore accomplish its subsequent goal, conforming to the tradition of documentaries. However, the scene is so aesthetically perfect that a viewer like me can hardly forget its manipulation of techniques and technologies (as foreseen by Benjamin), and therefore question its faithfulness – why does this happen to be a moody foggy night,which also coincides with that German decree and the title? Why is the camera so stable and everything in the frame so meaningful? Is this real or staged? Will the soldiers really raise their low rifles and kill as implied by the voiceover, or do they walk away like one of them starts to do in the scene? I would find out that the film never openly calls itself a reflection of truth, and we can only take its words and absorb its manipulations, especially when distracted by the vague sentence or the passionate music. Art is somewhat politicised, and even becomes a form of violence toward the viewer.and we can only take its words and absorb its manipulations, especially when distracted by the sentence or the passionate music. Art is somewhat politicised, and even becomes a form of violence toward the viewer.and we can only take its words and absorb its manipulations, especially when distracted by the sentence or the passionate music. Art is somewhat politicised, and even becomes a form of violence toward the viewer.
When examined as pure art, the work reveals even more haunting intertextuality. The low-key, the fog, the diagonal composition, the single hard light source, the slow Saxophone, and the train are all iconic elements of German Expressionist cinema, the most influential German cinematic school, and all give great aesthetic pleasure apart from the aforementioned scares, even if the creepiness is inherent in the same aesthetics of darkness and violent straight lines. The sound quality at this shot is subtly worse and older than that of the next one, reminiscent of the 1920s, the golden age of Expressionism, so the reference may be deliberate. This intertextuality can be a remark similar to that in 'Death Fugue' quoting Faust, on how the Nazi Germany considered least-civilised is in fact a blend of the brute and the artist, just like the camp SSs keeping orchestras, and politics, war, and violence itself are aestheticized by them or by us humans in general – many Expressionists are Jews and famously flee from Germany, after all.
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