11/23/2002 Entry:
"Night And Fog - Alain Resnais (1955)
Germany Year 90 Nine Zero - Jean-Luc Godard (1991)"

Seriously, I just accidentally typed "Jean-Luc Picard" up there. These two films were shown as part of a Film Center series on how non-German directors view Germany called "Germay As Seen By..." I didn't really know much about either of them, but they fit some free time I had and my curiosity was piqued by the descriptions in addition to the fact that I had never seen any Resnais.

Night And Fog was first, and I was hit pretty hard by it. The strategy of mixing archival footage with footage from the (then) present is extremely effective. The battle may be done, but these scars still remain. The archival footage is totally brutal. I've seen lots of Holocaust material over the years, but I don't think any of it was as horrifying as this, which is pretty amazing considering that Night And Fog is almost 50 years old. The text as written by Holocaust survivor Jean Cayrol is moving and Resnais marries it to the imagery quite effectively. I think that over the years that I and a lot of people of my generation have kind of gotten Holocaust burnout, like there's little else we can learn from any more Holocaust material. Every year on the Oscars we see the requisite Holocaust documentary nominated nd roll our eyes as if to say, "enough already, move on!" For something to break through that is pretty impressive. From what I understand, this is pretty atypical Resnais, far removed from Last Year At Marienband, but you have to give some props to anyone who can do something that effective.

I'e seen five Godard films now - Breathless, Alphaville, Weekend, half of Histoire(s) Du Cinema, and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero. Alphaville is probably my favorite of the bunch, in no small part due to my predisposition towards science fiction. Breathless I didn't necessarily "like," but I appreciated it for its essential place in cinema history. Weekend kept my interest about until the time the guerrilas appeared, then it lost me. Histoire(s) I wrote about last week, and this falls into the same class as that in a lot of ways. Germany Year 90 Nine Zero was only an hour long, and I was checking my watch every ten minutes. I think the biggest problem for me with this and Histoire(s) is that they seemed very sterile. They did not engage me emotionally in any way. So while I can appreciate them on purely technical and theoretical levels, watching them feels more like sitting in class than going to the pictures. Still, even given my ambivalence towards his work I've seen so far, there are many Godard films I'm very interested in seeing (most notably Band Of Outsiders and Contempt, which finally gets a proper DVD release from Criterion this month.)

Replies: 1 Comment

I really, really love Resnais. He's one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, up there with Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Argento, and Bob Clark (ummm, I'll explain later). If you plan on diving into the Resnais ooooov-rah, I suggest skipping "Last Year at Marienbad" and "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" and going for the later stuff, which is more accessible but, at the same time, just as challenging. I'd recommend "Muriel" (incredibly radical editing), "Providence" (one of those 'multiple layer of reality' type of stories, well-done, huge influence on my screenplay), "Mon Oncle D'Amerique" (most emotionally affecting, from what I've seen), and "Stavisky" (most straight-forward). And how about that narration in "Night and Fog"? Notice how it is written so that it is always addressed to the present viewer, regardless what year it is, to underline the message of "never forget"? (Okay, I didn't figure that out, I learned it in school, but it's something, one of the few things, that's stuck with me.) Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 11/26/2002 12:42 PM CST