The Most Disturbing 32 Minutes on Film
As I've mentioned before, Korean discount stores offer classic DVD's at an amazingly low price. My local branch of W------ is selling them by the pair for 5.900 won (US$5.36). Today, I bought the excellent East of Eden (1955), which was paired with a film I was not familar with: Nuit et brouillard (1955).
This 32-minute philosophical documentary about the Holocaust was called "the greatest film ever made" by François Truffaut. It was made only ten years after the camps were liberated, and intersperses peaceful contemporary color images of the camps with horrific black-and-white archive footage from the Nazis and the liberating Allies. The image that sticks with me is the seemingly never-ending pile of women's hair. Yet, the film never ventures into emotional manipulation. The deadpan narration of the stark, cold, and often bitter text written by Jean Cayrol, himself a survivor of the camps, asks some very difficult questions.
Here is the film's final warning, from Night and Fog (via Simply Scripts):
[By the way, I still have an extra all-region copy of The Song of Bernadette (1943), the inspirational story of Saint Berndette of Lourdes. I'll send it free-of-charge anywhere in the world to the first person who leaves a comment to this post. Include an email address, so I can get in touch privately, or, send me an email at jsny1998 at yahoo dot com.]
As I've mentioned before, Korean discount stores offer classic DVD's at an amazingly low price. My local branch of W------ is selling them by the pair for 5.900 won (US$5.36). Today, I bought the excellent East of Eden (1955), which was paired with a film I was not familar with: Nuit et brouillard (1955).
This 32-minute philosophical documentary about the Holocaust was called "the greatest film ever made" by François Truffaut. It was made only ten years after the camps were liberated, and intersperses peaceful contemporary color images of the camps with horrific black-and-white archive footage from the Nazis and the liberating Allies. The image that sticks with me is the seemingly never-ending pile of women's hair. Yet, the film never ventures into emotional manipulation. The deadpan narration of the stark, cold, and often bitter text written by Jean Cayrol, himself a survivor of the camps, asks some very difficult questions.
Here is the film's final warning, from Night and Fog (via Simply Scripts):
- "The crematorium is no longer in use. The devices of the Nazis are out of date. Nine million dead haunt this landscape. Who is on the lookout from this strange tower to warn us of the coming of new executioners? Are their faces really different from our own. Somewhere among us, there are lucky Kapos, reinstated officers, and unknown informers. There are those who refused to believe this, or believed it only from time to time. And there are those of us who sincerely look upon the ruins today, as if the old concentration camp monster were dead and buried beneath them. Those who pretend to take hope again as the image fades, as though there were a cure for the plague of these camps. Those of us who pretend to believe that all this happened only once, at a certain time and in a certain place, and those who refuse to see, who do not hear the cry to the end of time."
[By the way, I still have an extra all-region copy of The Song of Bernadette (1943), the inspirational story of Saint Berndette of Lourdes. I'll send it free-of-charge anywhere in the world to the first person who leaves a comment to this post. Include an email address, so I can get in touch privately, or, send me an email at jsny1998 at yahoo dot com.]
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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