Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) - 1955

Made ten years after the end of the Second World War, one can only imagine how massive the impact was when Alain Resnais Holocaust documentary premiered. That is still manages to shock, horrify and overwhelm is not merely a reinforcement of the tragedy which befell the Jews during World War Two but is also a stamp of the genius Resnais used to create the film.

Both the writer Jean Cayrol and composer Hanns Eisler were liberated from concentration camps, and it was not until Cayrol came onboard that Resnais, originally reluctant, agreed to direct the film. The film cuts between historical footage and photographs of the time as well as footage of the camps, including Auschwitz, as they were in 55, abandoned, seemingly innocuous and yet somehow containing the horrors which took place. The imagery itself is harrowing, especially the footage of dead bodies being piled on top of each other - their bodies looking like nothing more than sacks of bones.

There are no subjects the film shies away from with experiments, prostitution, torture, the gas chambers and executions who shown either in found footage or photographs.

The film ends with the liberation of the camps across and questions who was responsible for them.

The power of Night and Fog in undiminished, even 50 years on, and there is not another film which has addressed the issue is such an honest and impressionable way. Rarely is cinema this brilliant.

Night and the City - 1950

Directed by Jules Dassin Night and the City tells the story of Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), a hustler in post war London always looking for an angle, and always failing. After a meeting with retired wrestling legend Gregorious (Stanislaus Zbyszko), Fabian devises a plan to promote a wrestling match and thus get rich. In order to do so though he must avoid local wrestling promotor and underworld boss Kristo (Herbert Lom) who also happens to be Gregorious' son.

Shot on location in London the film shimmers with brilliance, both the performances from Wdimark, and Gene Tierney as Mary Bristol, Fabian's lover, as well as the strong supporting cast of character actors. The chiaroscuro lighting is sumptuous and fatalistic in equal measure, as Fabian scurries around the city looking for the finance to promote his wrestling match, Mutz Greenbaum, credited as Max Greene, does a wonderful job of capturing London, and rarely has it looked so stunning. The script also bristles with intensity and beautifully captures the desperation of Widmark's Fabian. The film is also notable for is complete lack of sympathetic characters, but what it manages to achieve is making each of the characters human, in world which has little to no regard for such a concept.

There are number of key seqeunces which elevate this film above a lot of the bog standard film noirs, the highlight being a seemingly endless, brutally and violent wrestling match, on which the hopes and dreams of Fabian hang. During this sequence, I found my self shifting closer and closer to the edge of my seat. The one scene highlights the genius of the film. I was gripped by a series of characters for whom I felt no sympathy and yet could not help but empthasise with their plight. Widmark in particular was a man on the cusp of crazy; his performance a series of sweating, pleading moments as he tried, with all his power, to drag himself up in the world and make something of his life.

A superbly brilliant piece of noir filmmaking from a stunningly talented directed, who made the film in the UK after he was blacklisted and forced to leave America. Night and the City is a groundbreaking Noir thriller with some great performances and a devestating ending. A must for any fan of film noir.