All the blood is dry, the tongue is silent

Keely 2022-03-25 09:01:15

This is "Night and Fog" shot in 1955, and the impact is so strong. This semester, I have watched a lot of documentaries of various types, themes and styles. Those works, as classics, cannot be said to have no charm. Only this one made me truly feel the power of documentaries. Perhaps because of the cruelty of the subject matter, its effect on me has been increased.

It’s still the Auschwitz, the Auschwitz in Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful. The Auschwitz I saw was the product of drama. And here it is real. Today, the vegetation here is lush, peaceful and serene, but there is still a smell that makes people involuntarily silenced. Aaron Resnais once filmed "Hiroshima Love", which still makes people feel poetic and beautiful when showing cruel themes such as war. Especially appreciate the narration text. The third party's tone is calm, but in fact, it is full of strong emotional tendencies under the literary rhetoric. All those who experienced concentration camp life were unable to give complete recollections. They may not even understand why that period happened. The street where they once lived is close at hand, but everyone is already in a hell where they cannot escape. Almost all were tortured into walking corpses because their appearance was so miserable that death seemed numbing and hopeless in Auschwitz. "The train that goes there, it won't come back."

Every picture is real. The hair on the floor is real, the black extends beyond the frame, and too much hair looks like the hair in our impression. The corpses piled up by the forklift are also real, although the skeletons without flesh and blood look very unfamiliar, and there is no trace of evidence that they were alive.

All the blood has dried and the tongue has been silent. Only Allen Resnais, those who reluctantly to repeatedly open the scars of history, are making the final cry.

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Extended Reading
  • Maegan 2022-04-23 07:03:40

    Greenery contemporary landscapes and grim old images after sins have passed. In the shots of various styles of guard booths on the train, people are as anxious as they are waiting to move, but they don't know that they are facing someone helping to close the door of the truck; night scene gate in film noir style; eye nude number tattoos; labor; food ; snow scene; toilet; cleaning-healthy work-free lice-death; symphony orchestra zoo greenhouse; punishment and humiliation of naked line-up of emaciated people; doll box made by inmates notes sharing food mutual aid; List of nations; commander's villa; guard's brothel; Simmuller's demand for efficient extermination - crematorium - ceiling scratches from struggling gas chambers - hair and shoes - human heads - soap The last 5 minutes are so shocking I really can't stand it. At this time, you can't help but believe in the heavy branding of photography on us - a belief that is sometimes unbearable

  • Myrna 2022-03-26 09:01:10

    Open a solemn video essay, read a piece of the saddest history of mankind, all this is so far away from me, but it can hit our fragile nerves hard...

Night and Fog quotes

  • Récitant/Narrator: Who among us keeps watch over this strange watchtower to warn the arrival of our new executioners? Are their faces really different from our own?

  • Récitant/Narrator: Somewhere in our midst, lucky kapos still survive, reinstated officers or anonymous informers. There are those who refused to believe or believed only for brief moments.