Disruptive Histories: Toward a Radical Politics of Remembrance in Alain Resnais's Night and Fog
1997; Duke University Press; Issue: 71 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/488560
ISSN1558-1462
Autores Tópico(s)Communism, Protests, Social Movements
Resumoproduced a long series of problems that reverberated in the European press for the next two years. The film was Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955), a thirty-two minute documentary on the Holocaust. Banned from the festival because of German protests, the film made public a whole process of historical repression. The initial complaint pressed by the German foreign office claimed that the film would incite anti-German hatred. A combination of these protests, cold war anxiety, and the French government's own reservations about archival material in the film (showing French policemen helping with the deportation of prisoners) all helped to get the film removed from the festival. In a weak attempt to assert a moral economy of retribution, the festival organizers also threw out a German film as a token of appeasement. While the German foreign office did anticipate the reaction of other European nations to their protests, truly unexpected was the reaction within Germany. Night and Fog became a site of contention for a wide range of issues. Within months it was being shown at film festivals and film clubs in the major German cities. Willy Brandt, then the president of the Berlin House of Commons, came out with a statement explicitly supporting the film.1 Likewise Paul Bausch, the chairman of the Federal Bureau for the Press, Film, and Radio, released a statement proposing that the government should support free screenings of the film to all civil servants.2 A
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