An Early Attempt at a Chilling Topic

No matter how many documentaries one watches about the Holocaust, it’s impossible to become inured to the subject. Or at least it is in my case.

So it’s no surprise that Alain Resnais’ short documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) made such an impact in 1956 that it was included in the 1001 Films list a half-century later. This one pulls no punches except for a single artistic decision made by the filmmaker to emphasize that the events were not a purely German phenomenon: none of the scenes are filmed in Germany. The deportation scenes are from France, while the concentration camps depicted are in Poland.

If 2022 audiences are shocked by the brutality despite having seen the images before, people in 1956, some of whom were viewing the content in cohesive story form–outside of newsreels–for the first time, must have been overwhelmed. It’s a skillfully built film created from probably the most powerful imagery of the 20th century. Even more to the point, it spoke of wounds that were still very early in the healing process.

One example of this, outside of the obvious question of countless families torn apart and lives ruined, is how the French censors of the time responded to the film. As I mentioned, the deportation scenes were shot in France. Some of the images showed Vichy (French) officials in the scenes. The filmmaker was threatened to have the film itself banned (on other grounds) if those uniformed officials were not removed from the edit. He had no choice but to accept.

Regardless of what war movies might have been made afterwards, this film brings the story of WWII to a close. While there are other films on the 1001 movies list that show events in and around the war (whether documentary or fiction), and there are excellent documentaries about the actual fighting, my opinion is that there are only two films about WWII that everyone should watch in order to understand the war. Night and Fog is the second of those films; the first is the chilling Triumph des Willens. Watch them in that order, and your mind will easily be able to understand how the war, and its consequences came to be.

Neither was created during the war, and neither deals with the fighting. But they make you understand.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest novel is a science fiction adventure entitled Colony in which a human settlement is created on a planet whose unseen previous inhabitants see humans as little more than playthings. You can check it out here.

Inaccurate and Not Much Fun – But Memorable: The Phenix City Story

The Phenix City Story is a kind of dramatized documentary of the sort we’ve become used to since the 1950s, but which was a novel format back then. It begins with an actual newsreel in which a reporter interviews real-life inhabitants of the city. Then the dramatized part begins.

Unlike a fictional film only loosely based on real events, such as the classic On the Waterfront, this one is a little constrained by its place and the real-life events it was supposedly based on. It was also, perhaps, too close to the action to be a great film.

Without spoiling the film for others, I’d argue that this small scale was the cause of most of the artistic license taken. When your film is about grubby, small-minded criminals and the good men who fight them, the canvas needs to be broad and the stakes enormous… or you run the risk of simply having a small, grubby film.

That was where The Phenix City Story was likely headed until, in a pre-production meeting, someone decided to add in some horrifying incidents. These plot points add all sorts of drama and impact, but they also move the film away from any claims to being a faithful reproduction of events.

I normally enjoy crime films, but this one was not enjoyable. The film-industry magic that can elevate crime to art and criminals to tragic heroes was intentionally missing from this one because it aimed to be, in some sense, documentary. But then it veers so far from real events as to be very suspect in this respect as well.

Someone enjoyed this enough to select it for the 1001 films list. I guess I can see why – there’s a certain amount of innovation that makes it deserving. But I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and wouldn’t recommend except to the terminally curious.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose latest book is a Sword and Sorcery adventure in the classic mold, where deep evils and deeper betrayals force our heroes to keep their wits about them at every turn. You can check The Song of Sangr out here.

A Shocking Film Likely Even More Shocking to Modern Audiences

Watching the 1001 films list is always cool. Sometimes because the films are really good. Other times because they’re classics you really, really need to be familiar with. But probably the best of all are the short experimental films. No others have the same WTF factor.

Les Maitres Fous (The Mad Masters) from 1955 may be the most WTF of all. It shows the goings on of an anti-colonialist sect in Ghana (still two years away from independence when the film was shot), complete with dog-eating, trances and dancing.

Is it a documentary? It is presented as such, but seems just far enough off-kilter to create serious doubts. The feeling is more like a modern “reality” show which is scripted to seem real.

Either way, it’s a bit of a disgusting film, in the purely visceral sense (I don’t get disgusted by unfortunate portrayals of people in old films – people who do so are too dumb to understand context). Blood and foaming mouths are not all that fun to watch.

But at the same time, it’s a film you can’t look away from. In that sense, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a bad road accident.

Interestingly, this one has offended both colonial officials (the butt of the supposed joke in the film) in its own day, and people who are outraged by the colonial era today. So it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

My own opinion? I didn’t like it. It feels like the objective was just to shock… without much underlying merit either from the anthropological side (unless it’s actually unscripted, which I find hard to believe) or from the artistic.

But don’t take my word for it. You can watch the film on YouTube, and draw your own conclusions. Since it’s quite short, at the very least you will find it interesting.

Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is entitled Desert Base Strike. If monsters and modern battlefields, with non-stop action thrown in for good measure sounds like something you’d enjoy, then you can check it out here.