Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog)

Critics Consensus

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Movie Info

Night and Fog represents the peak of director Alain Resnais' activities as a short-subject filmmaker. Framed as a documentary, the film is an unsettling view of life inside the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. As he would in his later features (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad et. al.) Resnais toys with chronology, with memory becoming present reality and vice versa at several critical junctures. Jean Cayrol, later responsible for the script of Resnais' Muriel (1962), wrote the narration for Night and Fog. The film was originally released in France as Nuit et Brouillard. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rating:

NR
Genre:

Documentary, Drama
Directed By:

Alain Resnais
In Theaters:

Jan 1, 1955 wide
On Disc/Streaming:

Jun 24, 2003
Runtime:

32 minutes
Studio:

Argos Films

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Cast

Michel Bouquet
as Narrator

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Critic Reviews for Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog)

All Critics (20) | Top Critics (1) | DVD (8)

Only half an hour long, this is the greatest film ever made about the concentration camps.

Jan 1, 2000 | Full Review…

Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader
Top Critic
Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (nuit et brouillard) runs barely over 30 minutes, yet it manages to pack a lifetime of horrors into its half-hour length.

Jul 24, 2016 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…

Matt Brunson
Creative Loafing
Alain Resnais' seminal 1955 documentary... remembers the confusion, and still feels the blind, hurt outrage at humanity's betrayal of itself.

Jul 20, 2016 | Full Review…

Witney Seibold
CraveOnline
A haunted litany about unspeakable events barely a decade old, the madness of history and the sin of forgetfulness

Dec 27, 2013 | Full Review…

Fernando F. Croce
CinePassion
One of the greatest documentaries ever made.

Oct 1, 2010 | Rating: 5/5

Phil Hall
Film Threat
Still remains timely.

Jul 22, 2007 | Rating: A | Full Review…

Dennis Schwartz
Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Absolutely one of the most important historical documents ever made.

Jun 23, 2007 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…

Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid
Regardless, this is a film that must be viewed. It's almost a prerequisite to being human to have to come face to face with your own capacity for inhumanity. Only after you recognize it can you deal with it.

Aug 19, 2005 | Rating: 5/5

Widgett Walls
Needcoffee.com
Provokes contemplative self-inquiry, and moves us beyond our initial and immediate emotionally simplistic knee-jerk horror and disgust.

Sep 5, 2003 | Rating: 93/100

Dan Jardine
Apollo Guide
Of all the films made about the Holocaust, Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) is quite possibly the most moving and thought-provoking,

Aug 17, 2003 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…

James Kendrick
Q Network Film Desk
When it comes to Holocaust documentaries, there is simply no further word than Alain Resnais's Night and Fog.

Jun 21, 2003 | Rating: 4/5

Christopher Null
Filmcritic.com
Emotional power unequalled by any fictional reconstruction of the Holocaust.

May 30, 2003 | Full Review…

James Leahy
Senses of Cinema

View All Critic Reviews (20)

Audience Reviews for Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog)

Apr 01, 2016

Resnais made this disturbing 32-minute documentary only 10 years after the liberation of the Nazi camps, exposing in devastating details a horrific monstrosity that must never be forgotten and turning it into a universal message to remind us that it could happen anywhere.

Carlos M Super Reviewer
Jul 23, 2012

A film that is hard but necessary to watch. Extremely powerful.

Graham J Super Reviewer
Jan 30, 2012

Short but haunting. Potentially the most important documentary about the Holocaust filmed within that time period. A triumph for Resnais.

John B Super Reviewer
Aug 12, 2011

Night and Fog is one of the greatest documentaries of all time and for a reason. Not only is it a honest and horrifying realistic look into the terrors of the Nazi concentration camps and their madness, but also one that doesn't sugarcoat anything. What we see is real and that makes it the most terrifying and heart wrenching, by the time the short was hitting it's stride around the halfway mark, I was in tears and just angry and feeling hopeless. The images and video depicted is truly as horrific as it is mesmerizing, I found myself pulled into it while at the same time repulsed and sick to my stomach. The Nazi's all denied responsibility in their inhuman crimes and monstrous deeds performed against the over 9,000,000 Jews that died at their hands. It really is hard to feel any pity, when these people were responsible for such cruelty and evil they inflicted on innocent people. Not only does Night and Fog capture this but it causes deep seeded emotion to come out and gives justice to the horrors of those that endured them. Not for the faint of heart, but one that I think everyone should watch and endure at least once.

Chris B Super Reviewer

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Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) Quotes

Narrator:

Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened at a certain time an in a certain place, and those who refuse to see, who do not hear the cry to the end of time.

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