Popular reviews

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 5

  When I was 16, I went on a school trip to Germany. It was a rare opportunity, and I lucky enough that my parents were willing to scrape up enough to send me. During the trip, we visited Dachau. I don't remember much about the trip, but every last bit of Dachau is etched in my mind. I've always found the darker parts of humanity fascinating, and it was darker in some ways than anything my teenage mind could fathom. They showed a film detailing what happened in Dachau, and it remains the most scarring, disturbing film I've ever seen. A friend who saw the same film took something else from it, a sense of hope, as the film ends…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 4

  That image of the women's hair will be ingrained in my mind forever. I actually vomited. Night and Fog stands beside Baraka as one of the most powerful documentaries of all-time, one exposing the beauty of our world, and the other, this one, exposing the very heart of darkness, the very core of the deepest abyss imaginable.

  Resnais summoned the courage to bring us the blackened, cold piece of cinema that every other filmmaker was afraid to bring us. There's nothing else to say; the film speaks for itself. I'm not even going to tell you that it's a must-see, because I wouldn't blame anyone that decides to pass this beast up... but it is, without question, one of the greatest films ever made.

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  Review by Lucy 4

  i can't in good conscience rate the realities of human suffering. this is gonna stick with me for a while

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★★

  "a concentration camp is built like a stadium or hotel: with contractors, estimates, bids and no doubt a bribe or two. no specific style—that's left to the imagination."

  creates an almost surreal horror out of the mundane machinery of genocide.

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  Review by SilentDawn

  Unspeakable, deafening horror, not only because of its succession of images, but in the juxtaposition between the visual impact and the musical undercurrent.

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  Review by Andy Siems ★★★★★ 1

  Once you have experienced NIGHT AND FOG you cannot "un-experience" it. Once you have crossed the line and seen history that is beyond comprehension, you cannot return to your innocence.

  NIGHT AND FOG is a great film because it exists only for the viewer to come to some sort of minute understanding of what occurred in the Nazi concentration camps during WWII.

  As a film it attempts to allow the subject to "speak for itself". Director Alain Resnais goes out of his way to not impose any sort of manipulation by use of music, camera or editing techniques to create any sort of 'feeling". Media can easily and usually is used as a tool to create a response to directed…

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★½

  Let this film be the proof aliens need to realize that humans suck.

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★

  Among the best shorts ever directed, Nuit et Brouillard, which is also one of the best and most cruel and direct documentaries ever conceived by mankind, remains as a jewel of classic cinema. Alain Resnais's management of the topic during such terrible, racist and merciless periods of human history perfectly combines both beauty and true horror, and sucessfully opens the mind, eyes and soul of the spectator in the most amazing and genius way I have ever witnessed. Excellent.

  100/100

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  Review by Justin Peterson 3

  Criterion Collection Spine #197
  (Foreign language film)
  (Documentary)

  A brief but staggering account of the sheer lack of humanity involved in orchestrating the genocide committed by the Nazi regime.

  "I am not responsible", says the kapo. "I am not responsible", says the officer. "I am not responsible". Who is responsible then?"

  With just a 32 minute runtime, Night and Fog is an essential documentary that everyone should see in order to witness the lengths that were gone to, in order to murder Jews and those who were considered undesirables in Europe during WW2. In my reading on the film, I learned that it represents the first 'cinematic reflections' of the Holocaust.

  The film utilizes footage during this tragic period of…

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  Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★★

  Damn that was painful to watch... Night and Fog illustrates the horrors of the Holocaust, the absolute evil, in a simple yet honest and unflinching way. It's a 30 minutes tour of disturbing images, poetic narration and uncomfortable music, and a film that keeps reiterating that this evil is impossible to accurately portray to match the realities faced by the victims. Words cannot simply describe how haunting and devastating some of these images are. And how powerful this film is. I honestly still cannot believe that these horrors actually happened and these images are real. Essential viewing.

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  Review by Ken Suzuki ★★★★★ 2

  "I'm not responsible", says the Kapo. "I'm not responsible", says the officer. "I'm not responsible"
  who is responsible then?
  – Michel Bouquet

  Alain Resnais' World War II documentary explores a concentration camp in southern Poland called Auschwitz. Auschwitz is one of the most horrific and dreadful atrocities humanity has ever known. The film is extremely severe as it revolves around the Holocaust. Though the contents of the documentary are severe, voiceover narrator Michel Bouquet narrated the film in such an evocative way that it's probably one of the most chill Holocaust documentaries despite its harrowing story. Bouquet tells the sadism inflicted upon the doomed inmates, including scientific and medical experiments, executions, and rape.

  Night and Fog was filmed just 10…

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  Review by Fabian ★★★★★ 10

  Growing up in Germany, large parts of my school education made a point of referencing the Second World War and the terrible things that were committed during the Holocaust. During middle school, I was shown more than a dozen of haunting documentaries similar in tone and impact to Alain Resnais's short, yet powerful Nuit et brouillard, we had memorable excursions to former concentration camps (in my case, the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre and the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen), all to ensure that things like these will never happen again.

  And yet, every day more so than the other, I feel like we as a society (and it doesn't really matter if I'm talking about Germany in particular, or rather about what…