Night Will Fall. (PG.)
Directed by Andre Singer.
Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. 75 mins.
The German Concentration Camps was to have been made in 1945 from the footage being sent back by the various film units that were discovering the camps. Its was directed by Sidney Bernstein, though for a month Alfred Hitchcock flew back from Hollywood to oversee it and work on its structure. It was never finished. Night Will Fall is not that film. Rather it is the story behind the film, of the survivors, the soldiers who first encountered the camps and the reasons the film was shelved and not completed at the time. Recently the Imperial War Museum has restored the film and retitled it German Concentration Camps Factual Survey and it will soon be available to view, though I'm not sure why you'd want to.
The film was originally conceived as a way to rub German faces in it, to ram home their guilt and show them what they had supported, however tacitly. That idea was quickly dropped by the British government (though the Americans went ahead with their own version put together by Billy Wilder.) Their reason for doing this were entirely pragmatic, the Germans were needed as a bulwark to Soviet expansion, but perhaps somewhere beneath that was the realisation that the film is unwatchable.
Today more than ever we subscribe to the belief that a filmed record of events is an inherently good thing, which it is. The problem is, once recorded it will be watched. The production notes includes a director's statement where he says “Night Will Fall is not for the faint-hearted.” In that case which kind of heart is it for? I desperately tried to wriggle out of seeing this but the BFI posted a disc to my house. They obviously feel it needs to be seen. I feel it needs to exist – if only for forcing into a denier's face and demanding they point out how it was all faked – but I just don't feel the need to see emaciated naked corpses being slung into mass graves again. Once should last you a lifetime.
What strikes you about the film is how unimaginable it must have been for the editors and film makers who saw this footage for the first time, with little or no forewarning of what they were about to experience. It is unbearable to watch it now when you know exactly what is coming; to have seen it with a pre-Holocaust frame of moral reference must have been a horrific defilement.
Directed by Andre Singer.
Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. 75 mins.
The German Concentration Camps was to have been made in 1945 from the footage being sent back by the various film units that were discovering the camps. Its was directed by Sidney Bernstein, though for a month Alfred Hitchcock flew back from Hollywood to oversee it and work on its structure. It was never finished. Night Will Fall is not that film. Rather it is the story behind the film, of the survivors, the soldiers who first encountered the camps and the reasons the film was shelved and not completed at the time. Recently the Imperial War Museum has restored the film and retitled it German Concentration Camps Factual Survey and it will soon be available to view, though I'm not sure why you'd want to.
The film was originally conceived as a way to rub German faces in it, to ram home their guilt and show them what they had supported, however tacitly. That idea was quickly dropped by the British government (though the Americans went ahead with their own version put together by Billy Wilder.) Their reason for doing this were entirely pragmatic, the Germans were needed as a bulwark to Soviet expansion, but perhaps somewhere beneath that was the realisation that the film is unwatchable.
Today more than ever we subscribe to the belief that a filmed record of events is an inherently good thing, which it is. The problem is, once recorded it will be watched. The production notes includes a director's statement where he says “Night Will Fall is not for the faint-hearted.” In that case which kind of heart is it for? I desperately tried to wriggle out of seeing this but the BFI posted a disc to my house. They obviously feel it needs to be seen. I feel it needs to exist – if only for forcing into a denier's face and demanding they point out how it was all faked – but I just don't feel the need to see emaciated naked corpses being slung into mass graves again. Once should last you a lifetime.
What strikes you about the film is how unimaginable it must have been for the editors and film makers who saw this footage for the first time, with little or no forewarning of what they were about to experience. It is unbearable to watch it now when you know exactly what is coming; to have seen it with a pre-Holocaust frame of moral reference must have been a horrific defilement.
