Night and Fog

Night and Fog is a French documentary short directed by Alain Resnais, released in 1956. It examines the Nazi concentration camp system, moving between present-day footage of abandoned camp sites and archival material from the war years. The film visits locations including Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbrück, Belsen, Neuengamme and Struthof, and combines contemporary colour photography of these now-empty grounds with black-and-white footage and photographs that record what took place there. The narration, written by Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the camps, accompanies the images, and the archive material extends from the rise of the Nazi regime and the deportation of Jewish people through to the Nuremberg trials. Michel Bouquet provides the voice narration.

The film was produced by Anatole Dauman, Philippe Lifchitz and Samy Halfon through Argos Films, Cosmo Film and Cocinor, and runs just over half an hour. It was Resnais's first credited directorial work, made before Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad and the features that followed. Its standing rests on unusually strong numbers: a critics' rating of 9 out of 10 from 25 reviews, alongside a TMDB audience rating of 8.3 out of 10 from 588 votes. The close agreement between professional and general viewers suggests the film has retained its force across generations.

Resnais approaches the subject through contrast rather than accumulation, setting peaceful landscapes against documentary evidence of atrocity, and the film avoids claiming that the passage of time has settled anything. It remains one of the earliest and most discussed cinematic treatments of the camps.