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
  • Kaia 2022-04-22 07:01:45

    History should not be forgotten. About Auschwitz, about the Jews, there are a lot of excellent films handed down. What about us? I am afraid that the historical materials have been burned. It's not just the eyes that are blinded, the eyes are just the windows to the heart.

  • Agnes 2022-04-23 07:03:40

    "The war slept, but we who saw it all had to wake up," the narrator said. Note that the term it uses is sleep, not death.

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.