Censorship in the 1950s: How did it influence the making of “Night and Fog”, one of the first film documentaries about the Holocaust? A film by Alain Resnais.The "Night and Fog Decree" was issued by Adolf Hitler on December 7, 1941. The "Night and Fog Decree" (Nacht und Nebel Erlass) bypassed all forms of fundamental law and was Hitler's order to his secret police to kill anyone in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe deemed a threat. The decree stated that such people were not to be executed immediately but were to vanish without a trace into the night and fog. (www.historylearningsite.co.uk). I would like to underline the poignant cinematography, very innovative for its time. The narration and shots introducing what was about to be discovered must have been extremely moving and melancholy. The mise-en-scène is both gripping and disturbing, every frame expertly edited. Resnais experimented with the so-called long shot and 360-degree framing, to make the voyeur very aware of the unbalanced composition. The film's pan back to Auschwitz brings us a close-up of the barbed wire. This clearly suggests that it is not what it seems. Resnais films the past in black and white and the then present in color. The atmosphere is chilling and the background music composed is unique. Where normally loud dramatic music would be used to express the abomination and enormity of the most horrendous scenes, Resnais did exactly the opposite. My main argument will be about what was behind Night and Fog. This controversial artwork is intertwined with post-war French politics and censorship - for example how post-war France wanted to be perceived in an official capacity during...... middle of paper.... ..wie . Michelangelo Antonioni; Ingmar Bergman, Alain Resnais. The Tantivy PressGreene, Naomi (1999) Landscapes of Loss: The National Past of Postwar French Cinema (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press) Krantz, Charles (1985) 'Teaching Night and Fog: History and Historiography' Film & History, 15: 1, pp 2-15Raskin, Richard (1987) Nuit et Brouillard by Alain Resnais (Aarhus:Aarhus University Press) (contains a complete and reconstructed screenplay and many critical sources)Robert Michael, (1984) "A Second Look: Night and Fog " in Cineaste 13, 4 (1984), 36-37, reprinted in Raskin, 159-160. This book contains a number of contemporary reviews of Night and Fog, as well as interviews with Resnais and more recent analyzes of the film. The material is printed without comment by the editorWilson, Emma (2006) French directors, Alain ResnaisFilmography