said, "Now, the icy water and garbage in the pond have filled the densely packed graves. The water is cold and muddy, just like our memory. The war has subsided, but we cannot close our eyes." In the film "Night and At the end of The Fog, the narrator says so. The director's camera did not close his eyes.
In 1955, 10 years after the end of World War II, French director Alain Resnais used his pen, his eyes, and his color film to take us back to Auschwitz, back to the dark night and thick fog.
A leading figure of the Left Bank of the New Wave in French cinema, director Alain Resnais is most famous for his often controversial attention to formalism, modernism, and social and political issues. Renai often takes time and memory as the themes, adopts mysterious and novel techniques in the narrative structure, gorgeous photography, lyrical editing and full of uncertainty. In 1959, "Hiroshima Love", which made him famous, is the most outstanding representative. Two years later, "Last Year at Marienbad" reached its peak in the artistic expression of the stream of consciousness of time and space.
Compared with Renai's most famous work, "Night and Fog" as an early experimental work can be said to be an anomaly. This film does not have the gorgeous light and shadow in "Hiroshima Love", nor the complicated movement of the camera in "Last Year in Marienbad", everything is smooth and composed. The director uses color to express Auschwitz, which was forgotten ten years after the war. It is quiet and desolate, more like a huge cemetery buried in the past; black and white lenses are used to record the dark history of the past. The contrast between color and black and white, isn't the contrast between the present and the past?
Records of history can be cold or emotional, and different perspectives bring different image styles. We can see tearful accusations in Schindler's List, and calmness and contemplation in Night and Fog. Godard said: Cinema is 24 frames of truth per second. The camera is the pen created by the director. Such calm and steady brushstrokes seem to place people in the dark concentration camps of the past. We followed the camera slowly forward, the camp, the hospital, the prison, the brothel... everything seemed to be a microcosm of the former society, but this microcosm was too cruel. There is no hoarse accusation or artificial sadness in the whole film, but the restrained anger and reflection hidden in this kind of calm can hit people's hearts even more. Godard's so-called truth is probably the case.
If people want to pick out the most unforgettable scene in the whole film, I am afraid it is the piles of women's hair. The camera stared at the messy pile of hair for a long time, hesitantly, terrified, and painfully. Then slowly lift it up until the hills of hair fill the entire field of vision, as if it could extend infinitely in perspective, endlessly. A strand of hair may not cause much vibration, but a huge amount can bring about a qualitative change. The blood and tears buried in this hair, staring at the fear and sadness above it, can't bear to talk about it any more. However, when people use these hairs as raw materials, as a source of production no different from wool, to make blankets, even the labor force that is forced to produce is humiliated and damaged people, the fear still disappears. These hairs, they no longer belong to any meaningful subject. Like wool, it's just raw materials. The producer is not the subject of meaning, but the host of labor. That's how everyone got out.
At the end of the film there is this passage:
"It's not my fault," said the prisoner head.
"It's not my fault," said the officer.
"It's not my fault," everyone said.
Whose fault is that?
Prisoners follow orders from officers, and officers follow orders from higher-level superiors. People who have no subjectivity, who are not shackled by freedom, how can there be any responsibility?
The crematorium has been abandoned, the crimes of the Nazis have become children's drama, and nine million ghosts still roam the suburbs. In those days, the train heading for the concentration camp was full of people who were insulted and damaged, and reached the end of pain and death in the night and thick fog; today, the rails are still there, but full of thorns. In our memory, there will always be the darkest part, which belongs to this unforgettable night and fog.
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