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Night Will Fall

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Night Will Fall
Directed byAndre Singer
Written byLynette Singer
Produced bySally Angel, Brett Ratner, EP: Richard Melman, James Packer
Narrated byHelena Bonham Carter
CinematographyRichard Blanshard
Release date
  • June 7, 2014 (2014-06-07) (Sheffield Doc/Fest)
Running time
75 minutes

Night Will Fall is a 2014 documentary film directed by Andre Singer that chronicles the making of the 1945 British government documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. The 1945 documentary, which showed gruesome scenes from newly liberated Nazi concentration camps, languished in British archives for nearly seven decades and was only recently completed.

The 1945 documentary, based on the work of combat cameramen serving with the armed forces and newsreel footage, was produced by Sidney Bernstein, then a British government official, with participation by Alfred Hitchcock. About 12 minutes of footage in this 75-minute film is from the earlier documentary.[1][2]

The title of the film was derived from a line of narration in the 1945 documentary: “Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall.”[3]

Synopsis

A British Army bulldozer pushes bodies into a mass grave at Belsen, April 19, 1945

The film intersperses documentary film from German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, the 1945 documentary, with recent interviews with survivors and liberators. The producers, editors and cameramen who produced the 1945 documentary are featured, and its long delay is explored.

As the film begins, Allied forces liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The camp commander, Josef Kramer, and the camp guards are taken as POWs. Other camps are shown being liberated, including Auschwitz and Majdanek in Poland, utilizing footage from Soviet cameramen that had been previously dismissed as atrocity propaganda. Civilians and German servicemen are shown being forced to tour the camps, past gruesome displays, including shrunken skulls.

Film clips are shown of interviews with survivors: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch;[4] Eva Mozes Kor tells about the sight of soldiers in white camouflage uniforms, liberating the camp while it snowed, and the soldiers giving prisoners chocolate, cookies and hugs.

Among the interviewed survivors is Branko Lustig, producer of Schindler's List,[4] who speaks of how liberation brought soldiers playing bagpipes. At the time, Lustig was so weak he could not raise his body to look out the window, and he thinks that he is about to die, and he thought bagpipe music he was hearing was the music of angels. Lustig theorizes that the 1945 documentary was shelved for political reasons, saying “At this time, the Brits had enough problems with the Jews,”[4] a reference to the situation at the time in Palestine, then a League of Nations mandate under British control.

The documentary includes a recording of an interview with Alfred Hitchcock on his involvement in the project, and clips of interviews with cameramen (who filmed at concentration camps after, or during, liberation, and recounts the production of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, which included the assembling of a team that included "perhaps the best known film editor in London,' Stewart McAllister, Hitchcock and Richard Crossman.

Background and production

The footage that first inspired the film came from the soldiers who liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The footage became a part of the evidence in the Nuremberg trials.[5] Based on this footage and footage from other camps, the 1945 documentary was initiated by Sidney Bernstein, then with the British Ministry of Information, to document for the German public the crimes of the Nazis at their concentration camps. Bernstein brought in Richard Crossman to write the film's narration and had Alfred Hitchcock flown over from Hollywood to advise on the structure. After production was initiated, the British government shelved the film without showing it to the public, and questions remain whether they purposefully suppressed it for political reasons or whether they determined that other projects would be more effective in the de-Nazification process.[4]

Andre Singer, director of Night Will Fall, said in a media interview that after the war ended in Europe in May 1945, "government priorities shifted [in Britain]. What seemed like a good idea in 1945 became a problem by June and July." The British needed the German people to rebuild their country, and the film would not have contributed to that. There was also a concern that "it would provoke most sympathy for the Jewish refugees still in the camps after the war [who] wanted to go to Palestine. The British were having problems with nascent Zionism and felt the film would be unhelpful."[1]

Adaptations

Later in 1945, the 22-minute short film Death Mills was produced by Billy Wilder for U.S. government authorities, with the German version, directed by Hanus Burger, shown to German audiences in the American occupation zone in January 1946.

Five of the planned six reels of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey were released in 1984 as Memory of the Camps, which was televised in the US, a year later.[1]

Restoration and Night Will Fall

The Imperial War Museum received the footage and script in 1952, and in 2008 started restoration of the 1945 documentary.[6] The work was completed in time for its world debut at the Berlin International Film Festival in early 2014.[7][8]

Night Will Fall's director was introduced to the project by Sally Angel, who worked at the Imperial War Museum. She produced the film with Brett Ratner.[1] The formats of the footage from 1945 includes black and white 35 mm, and color 16 mm film stock. The production companies involved in the film were from Great Britain, Israel, Germany, the United States and Denmark.[2]

Critical reaction

The film received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 100%, based on 21 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10.[9] Variety called it a "powerful, must-see documentary." [2] In The Guardian, critic Peter Bradshaw said the film shows "images which I have certainly never seen before. It exposes once again the obscenity of Holocaust denial. This is an extraordinary record. But be warned. Once seen, these images cannot be unseen."[8] The New York Times called it "not a film you’re likely to forget," and that "what the new film accomplishes, more than anything else, is to make you wish you could see the original."[3] The film's score, composed by Nicholas Singer, was nominated for Best Composition in a Feature Film at the 2015 UK Music and Sound Awards. The film won the Royal Television Society award for History in 2016 where it was cited as "A landmark film, an affirmation of the importance of television as a medium of truth and a document of record in itself.”.[10] It also won a Peabody Award in New York in April 2016.[11] [12]

Screenings

Night Will Fall broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 on 24 January 2015 as a single continuous programme, without any commercial breaks. It aired on major networks around the world during the week of 27 January, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.[1][13] It was broadcast by Swedish SVT on 26 January 2015, and also was broadcast by NRK three times in January 2015, and also was broadcast by HBO in the United States.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e King, Susan (25 January 2015). "HBO's 'Night Will Fall' chronicles making of WWII Holocaust film". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
  2. ^ a b c Simon, Alissa (27 August 2014). "Film Review: 'Night Will Fall'". Variety. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
  3. ^ a b Hale, Mike (25 January 2015). "Recalling a Film From the Liberation of the Camps". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Jeffries, Stuart (9 January 2015). "The Holocaust film that was too shocking to show". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
  5. ^ Dorothy Rabinowitz, ‘Night Will Fall’ Review: Nazi Crimes on Film, Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2015.
  6. ^ "Restoration and Completion of the Film". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  7. ^ van Hoeij, Boyd (2 February 2014). "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey: Berlin Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  8. ^ a b Peter Bradshaw (18 September 2014). "Night Will Fall review – unflinching footage reveals true hell of the Holocaust". The Guardian.
  9. ^ "Night Will Fall". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
  10. ^ RTS Programme Awards 2016
  11. ^ Peabody Awards to Honor David Letterman, 'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,' Names Finalists
  12. ^ ‘Going Clear,’ ‘The Jinx,’ ‘What Happened, Miss Simone’ Named 2015 Peabody Awards Winners
  13. ^ Carole Horst, Holocaust Doc ‘Night Will Fall’ Gets Global Broadcast, Variety, 21 November 2014.
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