197 Night and Fog

[domino harvey]

And a way bumped up price to reflect it!

[Ribs]

It's been so long since we've had an out-of-left-field upgrade I almost forgot how exciting they are. Hope this points to this six month gap being a series of escalating coincidences rather than a pattern for the future.

I recognize that this does include feature-length documentary as an extra but much like A Day in the Country I don't know if I'll ever be able to personally put down the money for a regular-priced title for something of this length. Considering we've still had recent $30 releases I don't see why they need to still be priced so high. But better than nothing!

[Drucker]

I get the price is higher than it used to be but anyone who will let 8 dollars get between them and a film they love can go home. We beg and beg these labels to take financial risks on exciting titles!

[solaris72]

The Joshua Oppenheimer interview sounds like a great addition.

[knives]

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but too bad they didn't use this as an opportunity to turn this into a more general Resnais short disc.

[Luke M]

I just sold my old DVD a few weeks ago - this is the reverse of the guy who says, "I finally just bought the old release. You're welcome."

[Graphist]

I’m very excited about the reissue but I wish they could use the old artwork which in my opinion is way superior. Oh well....

[djproject]

Beaver (for the Blu)

Apparently it is interlaced instead of progressive. I wouldn't think this was due to the archival footage.

[PfR73]

Was Night And Fog shot at 25fps? Was it intended for TV at some point? Otherwise, I don't understand why a 4K restoration of something shot on film would be presented 1080i.

[djproject]

Was Night And Fog shot at 25fps? Was it intended for TV at some point? Otherwise, I don't understand why a 4K restoration of something shot on film would be presented 1080i.

From the Wikipedia article

Night and Fog was shown on French television as early as 26 April 1959.[33] On 10 May 1990 a Jewish cemetery at Carpentras was desecrated and the body of a freshly buried man, Felix Germont, impaled on a stake.[1][42] Response was strong to this act, including having Night and Fog broadcast on all three of the French national television channels at the same time.[1]

There is nothing that indicates that the final product was intended for television broadcast nor what the original shooting film rate was. Furthermore, we are not sure if this was a result of the restoration itself or Criterion's mastering.

[cdnchris]

I noticed in my Facebook feed that Gary said he made a mistake: it's actually 1080p. I'm not sure how he made the mistake unless he simply copied and pasted something, but there you go.

[djproject]

Looking at the screenshots, it should have been obvious that there was no interlacing involved.

[tenia]

Looking at the screenshots, it should have been obvious that there was no interlacing involved.

Since 1080i streams can contain progressive materials, screenshots are far from being a good way to ensure if a BD is 1080i or 1080p. Interlacing doesn't mean visible combing, for instance.

[Norbie]

Was this film shot on 16mm or 35mm?

[jtarvainen]

Looking at the screenshots, it should have been obvious that there was no interlacing involved.

Since 1080i streams can contain progressive materials, screenshots are far from being a good way to ensure if a BD is 1080i or 1080p. Interlacing doesn't mean visible combing, for instance.

It's worth remembering that 25p or 29.97p material on a Blu-ray disc is *always* encoded as a 1080i50 (for 25p) or 1080i59.94 (for 29.97p) stream, as the BD specification does not permit 1080p25 or 1080p29.97 streams. In effect, the user's display device will analyze the field sequence, and if no temporal difference is found between consecutive fields (i.e. the material is frame-based), the fields are combined into a single frame (50i -> 25p) for display. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this, since every time a 25p or 29.97p BD is released, a lot of folks scream "interlaced!" and run for the hills. :-)

http://www.videohelp.com/hd" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[djproject]

Was this film shot on 16mm or 35mm?

16mm for the "present day" sequences for sure. I think the archive footage varied.

[ptatler]

Face aux fantômes, a 99-minute 2009 documentary featuring historian Sylvie Lindeperg

Nearly watched the whole Blu today (the Oppenheimer interview is a really good addition) but couldn't get beyond the 10-minute mark with the supplemental doc. At the risk of being branded a Philistine, I have to cop to being bored. Ms. Lindeperg's monotonous delivery of very dry information (and the sub-PBS production value) made it hard to crack. I'm also coming off being sick for nearly three weeks and am still hampered by Cipro so my tolerance is low.

Has anyone sat all the way through Face aux fantomes? Wondering if it occupies a significant place in the larger sphere of Holocaust studies or if it's just something Criterion got a good deal on? I'm unfamiliar with Lindeperg or the filmmakers.

[cdnchris]

I don't know if it occupies a significant space, but when it gets going she gives a history of the film and then looks at some of the archival footage used and looks at how the new footage is used in the context of delivering it's message, amongst other things. She also references an audio interview with Resnais.

I don't think her contribution is bad, but its presentation is as dry as shit baking in the sun, so I'm with you on that. It was terribly filmed and put together and it was like they were purposely trying to make it as uninteresting as possible, though I'm sure it was some misjudged artistic style.

[ptatler]

Glad to hear it "gets going" at some point. I'll definitely give it another try.

Beyond my own physical fatigue, I think I needed to digest my second viewing of Night and Fog before proceeding anyway. I'd last watched it in college (back in '98) and had a visceral reaction to it then. It has lost none of its potency. It's an uncanny marriage of nonchalant, factual documentary and a burning, indicting jeremiad.

I was fascinated by Oppenheimer's characterization of its white-knuckle pace as an approximation of the disorienting horror of what it would be like to be processed through the camps. I know that Son of Saul (which I have not seen) attempted a subjective approach to the reality of the Shoah but I can't imagine it improving upon Resnais' unblinking atrocity exhibition.

[djproject]

I've said before that Night and Fog reflects the Holocaust like a short poem (a haiku cycle or T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men") and Shoah like an epic poem (particularly the Iliad). Both are needed.

[Werewolf by Night]

And I'm tempted to say Son of Saul reflects the Holocaust like an airport paperback, but I'll be nice.

[FrauBlucher]

bluray.com

[Gregor Samsa]

Entering this discussion late, but I watched Face aux fantômes last night and thought it was one of the most fascinating supplements I've seen on any Criterion release. I understand the issue with its 'dry' presentation, and I do think it often assumes knowledge (so it doesn't say, introduce the significance of Westerbork or Etty Hillesum's diaries, or even the passing reference to Jules Michelet later on), but its such an insightful and philosophically rigorous look into the construction of a historical documentary in its very particular context, and I'm grateful Criterion included it. The parts where Lindeperg is able to connect Resnais's archival discoveries (such as the photos of Himmler's July 1942 visit to Monowitz) with Olga Wormser's developing historical thinking in relation to how to frame ideas of the concentration camp system and of the Holocaust prove of especial interest, especially considering Night and Fog was made several years before the Eichmann trial and Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews increased public awareness. Similarly, the Oppenheimer interview briefly alludes to the gendarmerie controversy, but Lindeperg reveals detailed archival materials showing not only how the situation was understood and negotiated during the film's making but also how the photo was originally used in the collaborationist Vichy press with its own particular message.

In addition to including Resnais's aural recollections at points throughout, it also includes a detailed history both of criticism on the film (evolving from a close focus on the text of the narration to a broader understanding of its images operating at times in juxtaposition with the spoken text) and early filmic and textual responses to the Holocaust, in ways which deepen even further our understanding of Night and Fog and its power as a historical document and a work of art. I was particularly struck by the brief reference to Vasily Grossman's 'The Hell Called Treblinka' (1944)--the image of scratch-marks on gas chamber ceilings in Night and Fog reminded me not only of his description of gassings on victims in "a corridor with a low stone ceiling", now after all their other sufferings being "robbed of the sky, the stars, the wind and the sun", but of a haunting passage where he describes their footprints as a symbol of transience and humanity amidst industrialised killing:

"The path was sprinkled with white sand, and those who were walking in front with their hands in the air could see on this loose sand the fresh imprint of bare feet: the small footprints of women, the tiny footprints of children, the heavy footprints of the old. This faint trace in the sand was all that remained of the thousands of people who had not long ago passed this way, who had walked down this path just as the present contingent of four thousand people was now walking down it, just as another contingent of thousands, already waiting on the railway spur in the forest, would walk down it in two hours' time. Those whose footprints could be seen on the sand had walked down this path just as people had walked down it the day before, just as people had walked down it ten days before, just as people would walk down it the next day and in fifty days' time, just as people walked down it throughout the / thirteen months of the existence of the Hell that was Treblinka." [Grossman, 'The Hell of Treblinka', in The Road: Short Fiction and Essays by the Author of Life and Fate, trans. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, (London: Maclehorse Press, 2010), 148-149.]