Material Remains: Night and Fog Author(s): Emma Wilson Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol.

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and Fog MaterialRemains:Night

EMMA WILSON

I In his "Seminar on Shoah,"Claude Lanzmann comments: I used to say that if there had been-by sheer obscenity or miracle-a film actually shot in the past of three thousand people dying together in a gas chamber, firstof all, I think that no one human being would have been able to look at this. Anyhow, I would have never included this in the film. I would have preferred to destroy it. It is not visible. You cannot look at this.1 Lanzmann has variously criticized Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary Nightand Fog the for its use of images. Following Lanzmann, there has been a tendency to typify two films, Shoah (1985) and Night and Fog, as differing,even opposing, responses to the call to bear witness to the horror of the Holocaust. Following Giorgio Agamben's discussion of the English film shot in Bergen-Belsen immediately after the camp's liberation in Remnants of Auschwitz and Georges Didi-Huberman's moves in Images malgretoutto resurrect the notion of image as trace and as truth, the critical importance of Nightand Fog (with and against Shoah) seems open again for debate.2 The opposition of Night and Fog and Shoah, and in particular the use of images in the former, deserves closer scrutiny. Night and Fog is too frequently divided from the body of Resnais's filmmaking, which more consistently casts doubt on the image and its referentiality.Aligning this film with Resnais's other early films and documentaries about art, such as Guernica (1950), Les Statues meurent aussi (1953), and Le Chant du styrene (1958), offers a differingperspective on the film.3 This is the context in which Night and Fog will be discussed here.
79 (1991), pp. 82-99. Studies 1. Claude Lanzmann,"Seminaron Shoah,"YaleFrench and the trans.Daniel Heller-Roazen TheWitness 2. Archive, ofAuschwitz: GiorgioAgamben,Remnants tout (Paris: Minuit,2003). (NewYork:Zone Books, 1999); GeorgesDidi-Huberman, Images malgre Le "'There are not Exercisesin Style": 3. The juxtapositionof thisarticlewithEdwardDimendberg's Resnais'searly and Fogwithin of Night Chant du Styrene' (thisvolume,pp. 63-88) enables contextualization filmmaking. Institute Ltd.and Massachusetts OCTOBER 112,Spring 2005,pp. 89-110. ? 2005 October ofTechnology. Magazine,

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Previous discussionsof the film,urgentin their ethical questioning,have often In chosen not to dwell closely on the material details of Resnais's filmmaking. material with and with as Resnais remnants, elsewhere, Night Fog, grapples of horrorand intractability remains,withhuman remains,and withthe affective theirpresence.Yet in showingmaterialobjects and bodilyevidence,he asks viewof ers to thinkcontrarily about the malleabilityof proof and the impossibility mass of the and in the about incomprehensibility grasping past, particular trauma. II The recent Arte/vid6oDVD of Nightand Fog (a thirty-two-minute film) is "Nuit et radio a of a 272-minute Brouillard, program, accompanied by recording 1954-1994,"producedforFrance CulturebyAndreHeinrichand Nicole Vuillaume. This radio programdrawstogether interviews withResnais,Anatole Dauman (the commenof who readsJean Cayrol's the Michel actor film), producer Bouquet (the In Klarsfeld.4 the historian and the survivor addition, Olga Wormser, Serge tary), he thereare detailedinterviews withLanzmann.5 Lanzmannaddressesthe difficulty has in speakingabout Night and Fog.He makesthe crucialpointthat,as opposed to For and Fog,Shoahis specifically a filmabout the destructionof theJews.6 Night or not treat Treblinka and is a film Resnais does about Lanzmann,Night Fog survivors;
4. Historians Olga Wormserand Henri Michel were directorsof the "Comit6 d'histoire de la and Michel Deuxieme Guerremondiale" thatcommissionedthe documentary fromResnais.Wormser de la deportation, inJune 1954 and in Novemberof the same yearorgapublisheda volume,La Tragedie nized the exhibitionRIsistance-Liberation-Deportation. 5. Didi-Hubermandrawson interviews withLanzmann cited in VincentLowy,L'Histoire Infilmable tout, (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001), pp. 85-86. See Didi-Huberman, Imagesmalgre p. 166. Lanzmann and Foghad been schedrecountspassingbya cinema whereShoahwas due to screenat 2 o'clock. Night uled for a noon screening.Lanzmann objected that he would withdraw Shoahif Nightand Fogwere shown. He comments:"I thinkthat the confrontation or juxtaposition of these two filmsmakes no and Fog." sense. Even ifthe subjectis identical,Shoahhas nothingto do withNight 6. This is an importantand troubled issue withrespect to the reception of Nightand Fog.Jean who wrotethe commentary of the film, was a politicalprisonerin Mauthausen.For Lanzmann, Cayrol, about the deportation.Lanzmann claims thatthe Cayroland Resnaisbetween themhave made a film wordJeworJewishis not spoken in the film.In factit is spoken,but onlyonce (in the evocation of a studentfromAmsterdam);scant images are seen of deportees bearing the yellowstar on their Jewish clothes. However,Charles Krantznotes rightly, "a close analysisof the filmrevealsnot a single stateand mentof the factthatthe Holocaust was a particularly Jewish experience" (Krantz,"TeachingNight Filmand History 15, no. 1 [1985], pp. 2-15). He continues: "Alain Fog Historyand Historiography," Resnais recently suggestedto thisauthor thatto have dealt withthe fateof theJewswould have been inappropriatein that it mighthave divertedattentionawayfromthe universalmessage of vigilance thathe wanted to convey, of an errorofjudgment" (p. 6). Robert though he conceded the possibility Michael goes further: "No one can doubt the humanistic intentof Resnaisand Cayrol.But theirsilence Himmler'simperative mirrors that'in public we willneverspeak ... of the evacuation unintentionally of the Jews,the annihilation of the Jewishpeople"' (in Robert Raskin,Nuit et Brouillard byAlain AarhusUniversity Resnais[Aarhus,Germany: Press,1987], p. 159). Raskin'svaluable volume containsa reconstructed and Fog,an interview withResnais,and numerousextracts fully shootingscriptof Night fromcriticism on the film.

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Sobibor, the extermination camps in which no traces are left. Lanzmann suggests that viewers will find catharsis in Nightand Fog, where Shoah, by contrast, offersno commentary, no images from the camps, working instead to open space for the work of interior reflection. Lanzmann addresses in particular Resnais's choice to use images of corpses moved by bulldozers.7 He states categorically that he would have never used these images. In an important recent article, "Nuit et Brouillard: Defence et illustration," Adolphe Nysenholc cites Lanzmann's criticisms of Night and Fog and argues that Shoah was constructed in opposition to Night and Fog, and to its use of archival images.8 He then mounts his defense of Nightand Fog in two ways. First, he points to the possible aestheticism of Shoah and to certain (inevitable) similarities between the films of Resnais and Lanzmann: in their filming of the Polish landscape, of the railway tracks and trains in which the deportees were transported, of the entrance to Birkenau. (Indeed Lanzmann himself speaks in the France Culture interview of his admiration for Resnais's shots of the latrines at Auschwitz.) More strikingly, Nysenholc goes on to argue for a certain interdependence of the two films. He suggests that without Night and Fog, Shoah would not have been able to rely on aural testimonies alone. He claims: "The words in Lanzmann's film necessarily evoke the images of Night and Fog."9 As an example, he suggests that the

of Bomba, the barberwho cut women'shair in Treblinka, testimony onlyholds its fullsignificance and Fog.He because we have seen images of a sea of hair in Night that is Shoahcomthere no total film and and of the that Shoah, argues Fog Night offers into the waysin whichShoahmayalways Nysenholc's argument insights be supplementedby the images,real or fictional, whichcirculate.Lanzmann may withholdsuch images fromus on screen but he stillgoes some wayto screening themin our imagination. of the in arguingforthisrisky However, interdependence twofilms, to seems to too overlook the fact that Nysenholc anyattempt literally affix to the an act of testimonies of Shoah in his (as images example) becomes arguably defenseor self-protection. The imagewe recallor imaginemaybe a defenseagainst the yet unimaginable image of the suffering and death of the Other on which Lanzmann fixesour minds.Writing about violentimages in filmmore generally,
7. These are shots 281-86 in the shootingscriptand appear close to the end of Night and Fog.The images are taken fromBritishnews footage filmedat Belsen. See Raskin,Nuit et brouillard byAlain Resnais, pp. 126-27. 8. Brande "NuitetBrouillard: Defense et illustration," in "AlainResnais,"Contre Adolphe Nysenholc, 9 (2003), ed. FranckTourret,pp. 11-21. Nysenholcplaces Resnais'sfilmalongside Battleship Potemkin filmsthat Dictator (1925), GrandIllusion(1937), and The Great (1940) as one of the twentieth-century transcends its time.In thisregardhe echoes Serge Daney,forwhom Night and Fogis "un film juste" and forwhom Resnais is a "seismograph" monamour, and who, in three works (Nightand Fog,Hiroshima de Kapo," Muriel)has offered See Daney, "Le Travelling to our modernity. unimpeachable testimony Perseverance: Entretien avecSerge Volume II Toubiana(Paris: P.O.L., 1994), pp. 13-39; Daney, CineJournal, 1983-1986 (Paris: Petitebibliothequedes Cahiers du Cinema, 1998), p. 28. Following AnnetteInsdorf, and Foghas remainedthe film of the (Nazi) genocide. NysenholcarguesthatNight 9. Ibid., p. 13.

afforda multiplicityof points of view. plete one another and, further,

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screen." can serveas "a fantasized Slavoj Zizek arguesthatviolence itself protective He specifies: Therein lies one of the fundamental lessons of psychoanalysis:the images of utter catastrophe, far fromgiving access to the Real, can functionas a protectivescreen AGAINST the Real. In sex, as well as in politics,we take refugein catastrophicscenarios in order to avoid the actual deadlock (of the impossibilityof the sexual relationship, of social antagonism).10 To summon Resnais's images of uttercatastropheand bodily torment may be to screen ourselvesagainstthe Real thatLanzmann chargesus to encounterthrough andFogalso thevery of Shoah. Resnais'simagesin Night Further, aporiasand faultlines have no clearillustrative or referential andFoghas more In thissense Night function. in common withShoahwithits absence of images,its suspensionof imagingthan Resnais'sapparentaesthetics. Shoah has suggested) with does (as Nysenholc Nightand Fog has been seen to prefigurethe ethos of Resnais's next film, Hiroshima monamour(1959), about which screenplaywriterMarguerite Duras notes: "Allone can do is speak about the impossibility of speakingabout famously The sense thatNight and Fogis a filmthattroublesvisual (and other) HIROSHIMA."I1 has been addressedbya numberof critics.Leo Bersani,one of the representation and Fog,"forall the smoothnessof of Resnais,writesthat Night strongest analysts vision." its visual representation, is constantly settingup obstacles to undisturbed He observes: "There are discrepanciesbetween what we see and what we hear, of irritatunemphatic discrepanciesthat nonethelesshave the cumulativeeffect ing our senses."12 Libby Saxton pursues such a reading of disturbedvision and writesof Hiroshima monamour and Resnais's later filmMuriel(1963): "Both films about the a self-consciousness depart fromthe same aporia as Nuit etBrouillard: of theirproject."13 the case that Cayrol'scomIndeed it is certainly impossibility mentary distances itself, self-consciously,from the images viewed, drawing of the attention to thisimpossibility. shotof the interior Shot 93 is a color tracking blocks at Birkenau. As we watch,we hear: "These wooden blocks, these tiered bunks that sleep three abreast,where sleep was a threat,these lairs in which to seek refuge, to snatcha furtive bite of food.... No image,no descriptioncan capturetheirtrue dimensionof constantfear."14 In a shorttext,"De la morta la vie,"
10. Lost Highway(Seattle: University Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Slavoj Zizek, TheArtofthe ofWashington/Walter Chapin SimpsonCenterforthe Humanities,2000), p. 34. 11. monamour Duras, Hiroshima (Paris: Gallimard,1960), p. 10. Marguerite Resnais(Cambridge,Mass.: Leo Bersani and UlysseDutoit,Arts 12. ofImpoverishment: Beckett, Rothko, HarvardUniversity Press,1993), p. 183. of 13. Evidence: Ethical Issues in FilmicTestimony" (Ph.D. diss.,University LibbySaxton,"Invisible here myargument Cambridge,2004), p. 204. Saxton's broader engagementwithLanzmann influences and, like her,I invokeZizek in thiscontext. 14. and Fogare takenfrom fromNight AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuit et Brouillardby p. 88. Translations the subtitledU.K. video copy.

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"memories whichis publishedwiththe commentary of Night and Fog,Cayrolwrites: falters are intransmissible."15 At a further and Fog,the commentary point in Night and fallsintosilenceas Cayrolattempts to describethe uses made of hair,of bones, The commentary is and finally of bodies: "withthe bodies ... but words fail."16 of silentforthe next fiveshots (ten seconds of filmtime). Sylvie Lindepergwrites them and Fog:"thisfilmshowedthe terrible archiveimageswhileintegrating Night on the limits intoan implicit reflection of the image."17 of the imaginary(despite Serge Daney describes Resnais not as filmmaker the directorclaiming in an interviewthat the imagination interestshim more than memoryper se) but as a scenaristof the unimaginable.18 I, too, argue that Resnais seeks to know or understand a relation between the unimaginable (the the unsayable) and the verymatterthatremains-the materialremains, invisible, the relics and traces of past experience. His filmsworkat that difficult junction betweeneventsthatcannot be known,seen, or felt(in theiroccurrenceor in retto offer the images and objects,which seem conversely rospect) and the matter, material proof and evidence. Matter,materiality, and the senses are crucial in Resnais'searlyfilmmaking. Indeed it is throughthe senses,in particular througha tactile or haptic engagementwiththe images displayed,a manipulationof them (in the fullsense of the term),thatResnaiscomes to markhis viewerand to make him or her awareof the difficulty and fragility of such evidence. III Resnais attemptedfromthe beginning to make a strongimpressionwith and Fog.He saysin an interview, "The shortfilms whichweremade about the Night in '46 did not and Fog,itwas mywishto '45 and reach With Night camps anypublic. make a filmlikely to reach a largeaudience."19 GastonBounoure quotes Cayrolsayfromthe camps,I at home withthe pile of photographs ing,"When I foundmyself Resnaisrecounts I mad."20 In Culture would the France interview, really thought go filmand that the thathe had nightmares of of the throughout period preparation he would wakeup screaming. In an interview withRichardRaskinhe explains,"it's
15. Jean Cayrol,"De la morta la vie,"in NuitetBrouillard (Paris: Fayard,1997), p. 59. 16. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 123. 17. Archives de la Liberation: filmees (Paris: CNRS dufutur SylvieLindeperg,Cliode5 a 7. Les Actualits Editions,2000), p. 183. here forearly 18. Volume a preference II, 1983-1986, p. 29. Daney is expressing Daney, CineJournal, films such as La vie estun roman Resnais,ratherthan forthe later,less successful (1983) or I WanttoGo Home(1988), whichexplore the imaginationmore literally. For Resnaison the imaginationratherthan memory (the topos most closely associated with his filmmaking),see Robert Benayoun, "Proust, revue de cinema: Alain Resnais jamais!: Entretienavec Alain Resnais,"in Stephane Goudet, ed., Positif, (Paris: Gallimard[Folio], 2002), pp. 275-81. 19. Alain Resnais, "Alain Resnais a la question," Premier Plan 18 (1961), pp. 36-89. Lindeperg discusses the effect on spectatorsof viewingthe newsreelimages on theirfirst release; see Clio de 5 a 7, p. 165. GastonBounoure, "AlainResnais,"Cinema 5 (Paris: Seghers,1974), p. 133. 20. d'aujourd'hui

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a filmthatleavesme deeplyill at ease, yes,still."21 of the feelHe revealssomething I this malaise he details as the editing process: "Yes, remember ings underlying I was the film at evenings(because nightto save timesince we were under editing such pressure),I had the strangeimpressionthat I was manipulatingimages of corpses or, what is worse, even of living people-and tryingto experiment The materialmanipulationor handling of documents-the physical formally."22 The sense withwhichResnaisand Cayrolwerefaced-brings distress. photographs is compounded and reflected in the editingprocessin whichthe imagesare physiachieved throughmontage. callyand semantically manipulatedin the interrelations Resnais refersto his workin particularwithdead and livingbodies. He registers some uncertainty of still about the aestheticeffects achievedthrough manipulation between and movingimages.Raskinquotes Resnais sayingin 1956, "The contrast movementand stillnessfor certain dramaticaspects seems verymannered,I was evenslightly ashamedas I was editing."23 In Images Didi-Hubermanarguesforthe importanceof imagesof tout, malgre and fromAuschwitz Auschwitz in the attemptto imagine the hell of the camps. His case is based primarily on fourphotographs-shredsof evidence-from crematorium 5 at Auschwitz.These photographscapture images of the cremation of gassed bodies and of women pushed toward the gas chamber. Didi-Huberman writes,"To wrestan image fromthis,in spite of this?Yes. It was necessaryat all costs to give a formto thisunimaginable [horror]."24 to the image as He returns trace of the real, as evidence. Withinhis argumentagainst the unrepresentable, the invisible, he movesbeyond these exceptional,indelible images to thinkother modes of imagingand representation. Claiming that the reception of Nightand Fog prefiguredthat of Shoah,he, like Nysenholc,stressesthe formalsimilarities between the openings of both films.He considers Lindeperg's discussionof the film,writingthat, for Lindeperg, "the image of the skeletal bodies comes to 'screen the massacreof healthywomen and children,led to the gas chambersas Didi-Hubermancounters: "But one cannot reproach a theyleftthe convoys.'"25 workforfailingto keep a promiseit nevermade: Resnais'sfilmin no wayclaimed a means to 'teach us everything' of the camps and onlyproposed, more modestly, of access to the inaccessible."26 those built "Scorned who them, writes, Cayrol by us to to hard for those within of is the these them, unimaginable camps reality and Fog,admittedly uncovertracesof now."27 of Night Didi-Huberman'streatment brief,takes the formof a strongdefense.For him,the filmdepends on "a shaking
21. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 60. 22. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid. 23. 24. Didi-Huberman, tout, p. 21. Resnaismade use of one of these imagesas shot 240 of Images malgre and Fog (Raskin,Nuitet brouillardby AlainResnais, Night p. 119). 25. Ibid., pp. 164-65. The embedded quotation is fromLindeperg,Cliode5 a 7,p. 183. 26. Ibid., p. 165. Ibid. The quotation fromCayrolaccompanies shots 91-95 of the shootingscript,in whichwe 27. see tracking shotsof the camp blocks.See Raskin,Nuitet brouillardby AlainResnais, pp. 87-88.

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created froma contradictionbetween the inevitabledocuments of up of memory These marksof the preand repeatedmarksof the present" (his emphasis).28 history the "testimony," sentderivefrom Resnais's"subjectless" shots,but also from tracking Hanns written and musical,provided respectively and Eisler,music by Cayrol by the filmas a for to consider the film. is Didi-Huberman composer surelyright as so does he he and whole. As defends such, composite imaging representation defendmontageand the veryconstruction (and questioning)of meaningthrough the editingprocess in termsthat seem entirely apt for Resnais'suse of montage: a has when it conclusionor closuretoo quickly: value does not seek "Montageonly whenit opens and complicates notwhenitschematizes our apprehensionof history, "In his choices of duration aesthetic validated: Resnais's is thus abusively."29 project and editing,Resnais achieves this powerfulfeelingof presence which givesus a ofwhat'a camp' could be in Nazi Germany."30 synthetic representation Detailed attentionto Resnaisis not Didi-Huberman's malgre projectin Images to allow the "imagetout. His broaderdefenseof the value of montage (and refusal to coincide) is enabling and exact. Yet a closer montage" and "image-mensonge" tactics of Resnais's and pursuit practiceas editor-an analysisof the painfulwork of manipulation he undertook night by night-reveals a more hesitant, even between Resnais'simages and relationthan Didi-Hubermanintimates tremulous, the inaccessiblereal he seeksyetto represent. Resnais'smanipulationof imagesin an awarenessof the extent and Fog,as much as Cayrol'scommentary, Night betrays to whichthese images are screeningus fromthe reality of the camps,ratherthan is witnessed it for us. This of their wariness of and screening rearrangement, images, in two particulartropes:in the play of movingand stillimages (defended despite Resnais's commentsabove) and in attentionto the sense of touch (in a move to privilegethe haptic overthe optic). IV and Fogis difficult to grasp in its movementand internalconnections: Night resistthe mesmerizing, even petrifying forceof certainimages arreststhe viewer, effect is this of If the film into an whole. aesthetic only ing integration anything, enhanced by the availability of the filmon DVD, in which the viewercan pause have nevertheon certainimagesbeforemovingon. Readingsof the film infinitely less tended to find in it two distinctsets of images, or "sheets of past" in Gilles Deleuze's terms:present-daycolor footage fromAuschwitzand Birkenau and black-and-white archivefootage. Resnais's color tracking shots have drawnmuch attentionfromcritics;these shots manifestly foreshadowhis movinggaze along du monde the corridorsof the Bibliotheque Nationale in Toute la memoire (1956), and the baroque the rebuilt streets of in Hiroshima mon Hiroshima amour, along
28. 29. 30. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 152. Ibid., p. 164.

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walls of the palaces in Last Yearin Marienbad (1961).31The relationof the blackalso deserves shotsof Night andFogto Resnais'sfilmmaking more broadly and-white does of the material edited as the attention, however, together. diversity very The first set of black-and-white images comes as shots 6-16. Resnais shows from withshots by Leni Riefenstahl images fromGerman news footage intercut a 5 has offered Shot the is on movement. Will here (1934). Emphasis of Triumph "No current shot from Birkenau hear the commentary, tracking againstwhichwe This evocation of the step passes throughthe wires,no step is heard but ours."32 and tread is the brutalpoint of transition to shot 6, in whichwe see German soldiers marching in step, followed by further footage of soldiers in shot 7 Resnais offersa accompanied by the words, "The machine gets underway."33 of mechanized image of Nazism as infernal machine,corroboratedby the rhythm Eisler's music. The contemplative, slow movement of the tracking shots at Birkenauis interrupted of past mechanizationand filmfootage. by the intrusion Shots 17-41 show Resnais introducinga further in which he now edits strategy, togethera series of photographicimages thatshow the architectural stylesof the begins to summon camps. As one still image replaces another,the commentary the names of random victims: Stern, a Jewish student from Amsterdam; Schmulszki,a shopkeeper fromKrakow;Annette,a schoolgirl fromBordeaux. of names we see later in Despite the act of naming-and the immense registers the film-no attemptis made to followa personal trajectory, not even that of Cayrol.Yet in the last still shots of this sequence, Resnais introducesimages of individuals, apparently makingvisiblethe deportees' experience. Resnais lingers on each of these shotsforfourseconds,slotting theminto the frameso thatthey hold our attention fora fewmomentsonlyto be displaced byfurther images.The passage of the shots is too fastfor the viewerto be able to lingeron theirdetail (unless he or she chooses to pause); the even pace of the editingallowsno shot to claim priority. Instead the move fromshot to shot appears to hintat some narraas its predecessor, tivedevelopment, as ifone image willsucceed and substantiate if Resnais is moving towardnarration or even animation in his editing of still images. a The sequence begins withthe famousphotographof an arrestin Warsaw, child's hands raised, Nazi soldiers in the background. The image, arguably staged, is stilland is also iconic. Resnais props it up againstother stillimages of
31. Critics have in fact responded rather differently to the tracking shots in Nightand Fog. Benayoun suggeststhe shots become tools in Resnais's act of inquisition.For Pinel, the slow glide of cautious the camera worksto animatea still(dead) setting. a more melancholy, AnnetteInsdorfoffers or thisfluidcamera suggeststransience, and investigating, reading,counteringthat"whileconfronting the license of smooth mobility thatcan existonlyafterthe fact."See RobertBenayoun,Alain Resnais de l'imaginaire (Paris: Stock/Cinema,1980), p. 54. Quotations fromPinel and Insdorfcome arpenteur fromtextsreproducedbyRaskinin Nuitet Brouillardby AlainResnais(pp. 145, 147). 32. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 74. 33. Ibid.

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Athens ... ";35 he cuts to a closer shot of a man and woman among other depor-

deportees. There seems to be a directrelation between the first image here and the commentary: "Rounded up in Warsaw."34 Then Resnais cuts to an overhead shot of deportees beneath a clock: "Deported from Lodz, Prague, Brussels,

tees as the voice-overcontinues: "Zagreb, Odessa, or Rome."36The editing gives the illusion that we are coming in closer to this particulargroup, yet the voiceover disruptsanyconnection between the images seen and a particularplace. We see a handfulof images; what is evoked in the filmis a calamityacross Europe. These fewimages attemptto referto that calamitybut in no sense representit. The narrative movementof the sequence is arrestedby the move onward to the shot of prisoners interned at Pithiviersand guarded by a French gendarme.37 Like the Warsawshot, this image seems more self-consciously posed and pictorial, withthe windowframewithinthe shot and the gendarme in the foreground observingthe scene. As the filmseems to tend for a moment towardnarrative, Resnaisbreaksanyflowbydrawingattentionto each image as a disparate,framed forthe spectatorby this tensionbetween flow picture.The filmcreates an effect and its arrest. Shots 40 and 41 offer otherstillimagesof the deportationin France withan overheadshot of people waiting fortransportation at the Vel d'Hiv,followed by an of d'Hiv resistants at of Vel The shot the image "captured captures Compiegne."38 whatseems an unstagedmomentfrozenin time.We see women sitting in clusters, their aroundthem.The shotalso reveals womenin motionas they several belongings walkup the alleyof the enclosure.Shot 41, at Compiegne,closes in on a group of resistance themherded along under guard.The stillphotograph workers, showing left. showsthem at a momentas theywalk to an unknowndestinationoffscreen its the a backward chance movement, glance. The Despite stillness, image captures stillphotographs the transition the of shock toward anticipatemovement, looking fromshot 41 to 42. In the crucial moment towardwhichwe have been moving, Resnaiscuts fromstillphoto to documentary footage,here Germannewsfootage, froma Polish documentary.39 borrowed in the footageare of the same The figures in the size and scale as in the previousstillphotograph. Theyare also seen walking same direction. the viewer's In thistransition from Resnaisfulfills stasisto movement
34. These words are inexplicablymissingin Raskin's shooting script,but the frameis described on p. 78. 35. Ibid., p. 78. 36. Ibid. 37. This image was censored on the first release of the film.In a telephone call to Resnais the censors requestedthatthe image be cut because it mightbe offensive in the eyesof the present-day (1955) The image was shot at the concentrationcamp at Pithiviers, one of the two main concentramilitary. can tion camps forforeign-born cornerof the framean officer Jewsarrestedin France. In the lefthand be seen surveying Resnais resisted the camp froma watchtower. His kepi signalshis French nationality. censorship.A compromisewas reached: the frameremained but a beam was superimposedover the figure. 38. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 79. 39. Ibid., p. 80.

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(painful) wish to see these figures as animate, as living and moving. It is as if the photograph itself is animated, achieving the move from stillness to motion that is achieved in the development of cinema as art form (and commemorated, for example, by Chris Marker in LaJetee [1962]). These formal similarities between the still photograph and film footage Resnais selects here enhance this illusion of animation and announce a hesitation between stillness and movement which, despite Resnais's misgivings, is integral to the function and effect of Night and Fog. Alternating stillness and movement reminds us of the limited power and referentialityof the still photographs. The very pace of the deportees as they pass in shot 42, the different relations between them instantiated and briefly glimpsed, are missing in shot 41. Shot 42 is all the more intense as the moving footage emerges from the evenly edited still photographs. Straining to see and know,we watch these animate crowds of individuals who are yet like Barthes's condemned man in Camera Lucida, both dead and condemned to die.40 Resnais now edits together a series of moving images of assembled deportees. The still photographs have led to this animation, which leads in turn to a piecing together of images of individuals on the railway platforms, packed into wagons and cattletrucks. There is no sense that movement has simply superceded stillness. One shot (46), though motion-picture footage, is an almost still frame in which a woman sits frozen and immobile staring into space (a man behind her looks directly into the lens of the camera). We see the footage for just three seconds; our sense of what is still and what is moving is unsettled by the woman's numbness, her disregard, her catatonic state. The relation of the object filmed to the medium of representation is brought into question; here a woman seems only barely animate even on film. Such hesitation, such uncertainty, key to the aesthetic experimentation of Nightand Fog, infests Resnais's later editing of shots of the Muselmann. In RemnantsofAuschwitz, Agamben, in part following Primo Levi, argues that "the complete witness ... is the one we cannot see: the Muselmann."41He continues, "In the Muselmann, the impossibility of bearing witness is no longer a mere privation. Instead, it has become real; it exists as such. If the survivorbears witness not to the gas chambers or to Auschwitz but to the Muselmann, if he speaks only on the basis of an impossibility of speaking, then his testimony cannot be denied."42 To substantiate these claims, Agamben draws new attention to the figure of the Muselmann; this itself is of undoubted significance whether or not his broader argument is accepted. Drawing on texts byJean Am6ry,Levi, and others, Agamben writes that the death of the Muselmann had begun before that of his body. The Muselmann is described as a staggering corpse, as a mummy-man,as the living dead. He notes: "'Finally,you confuse the living and the dead,' writesa witness
40. 41. 42. See Roland Barthes,La Chambre claire (Paris: Seuil, 1980), pp. 148-51. Agamben,Remnants ofAuschwitz, p. 162. Ibid., p. 164.

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of Bergen-Belsen.'Basically,the difference is minimal anyhow.We're skeletons thatare stillmoving;and they'reskeletonsthatare alreadyimmobile.But there's even a thirdcategory:the ones who lie stretchedout, unable to move, but still breathing slightly."'43 of gazingupon the Muselmann: Agambenconsidersthe impossibility Other witnesses confirm this impossibility of gazing upon the Muselmann. One account is particularly eloquent, even if it is indirect. A fewyears ago, the English filmshot in Bergen-Belsenimmediately afterthe camp's liberationin 1945 was made available to the public. It to bear the sightof the thousandsof naked corpses piled in is difficult common gravesor carriedon the shouldersof former camp guards,of those tortured bodies thateven the SS could not name (we knowfrom thatunder no circumstances were theyto be called "corpses" witnesses or "cadavers,"but rathersimplyFiguren, dolls). And yet since figures, the Allies intended to use this footage as proof of the Nazi atrocities and make it public in Germany, we are spared no detail of the terrible the camera lingersalmostbyaccident spectacle.At one point,however, on what seem to be livingpeople, a group of prisonerscrouched on the ground or wandering on foot like ghosts. It lasts only a few seconds, but it is stilllong enough forthe spectatorto realize thattheyare eitherMuselmdnnerwho have survived bysome miracleor,at least,prisoners veryclose to the state of Muselmdnner. With the exception of this is perhaps the sole which he did frommemory, Carpi's drawings, the same cameramanwho have. Nevertheless, image of Muselmdnnerwe had until then patiently lingeredover naked bodies, over the terrible "dolls" dismembered and stacked one on top of another, could not bear the sightof these half-living began once beings; he immediately again to show the cadavers.As Elias Canetti has noted, a heap of dead the powerbodies is an ancientspectacle,one whichhas oftensatisfied ful.But the sightof the Muselmdnner is an absolutely new phenomenon, unbearable to human eyes.44 of presentingthis Resnais, in Nightand Fog,contends with the possibility image to us as unbearable. Shot 164 is an image of a Muselmann (designated as such in the shootingscript)wrapped in a blanket.He is standingbut skeletal,his eyes shut. The next shot shows a man lying,his eyes open but unfixed on any object, his body wrecked and huddled in blankets. Shot 166 shows a deportee supportedby his comrades. His pose is contorted,his mouth open in pain as his head hangs to one side. Each of these images capturesa stillshot of an individual near death. The death-bearingimage captures a moment of transitionthat is
43. 44. Ibid., p. 54. Ibid., p. 51.

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a moment in which the divisionbetween life and death, body and unthinkable, corpse,is all but denied. Beforewe assimilatethese images,Resnaisagain disrupts shots,the camera takes anyfixedor fullcontemplation. Cuttingto color tracking us towardthe hospitalat Auschwitz, then cuts to footage filmedforFrench newsreel. We see men in agony on the hospital beds, contortedlimbs raised, barely covered by blankets.What appears to be another stillphotographin its composition and framingproves to be live footage. The bare movement of a figure of breathingin the opening of the sequence signalsthis (the image reminiscent words cited life above and the of these Wolfgang Sofsky's byAgamben) desperate men is figuredas movement, as a pulse and a breath,as the flickering of eyelids. In the last shot in the sequence (174), Resnais abruptly insertsa stillimage of a man withhis eyes wide open. Despite the rigor of his pose, the contortedfacial betweenhis body and those we expressionsuggestshe is stillalive; the difference see in the previouslive footage is that the photographstillshim and fixeshim, leaving us bereftof the bare movementof the previousimages. In these moves betweenstillimagesand livefootageResnaisregisters the category disturformally bance inherent in the figure of the Muselmann (as describedbyAgamben). These Later,the filmshowsa series of stillimages of the dead at Auschwitz. follow A shots within the chamber. immediately present-day close-up on a gas woman's face is reminiscent of the distorted of the dying of the Muselmann, pose in shot 174 we see the the relations between (as gaze dyingand the mirroring Resnais in edits shots of massed sentient flesh now invulnerable with dead). bodies, and unmoving.Indeed Resnais continues to assertthe horrorof this change of state. In live footage fromSoviet newsreelhe shows corpses burned. A close-up

and Right facing page: Alain Resnais. From andFog. 1955. Night

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fromthis footage shows the charred corpse of a man, his formin material that seems unrecognizable as flesh,yet his pose and expression a remainder of his of a human shape and life.The image of the man's head is disturbingly reminiscent of shot the face of a statue,pitted, aussi.In response meurent damaged in Les Statues to the shockof thissimilarity, of human sentience as we fight againstthisdisavowal and form, Resnaisnewly us to the once livingstateof the human effigies sensitizes in Night and Fog. In trackingshots of corpses piled on a funeralpyre,collapsed that again brings the and difference among logs, it is the dialectic of similarity forceof the image.The pale facesof the dead, theirmortified bodies, eerilyresemble the logs among which theylie. (The shot may recall previousimages Resnais has used in Night and Fogas markers in the camp: carvedmariof man's resistance onnettesand monstersmade by camp inmates.) Yet in the face of this obscene between fleshand wood (reminiscent of the Nazi euphemismscited by similarity Agamben), the viewerresponds with horrorat the human formsglimpsed,the facesand hands. One man seems to hide his face. In an image of extremepathos, the last figureglimpsed seems crouched on his side, as if asleep. As the divide betweenlivingand dead, and betweenonce animateand always inanimatematter is eroded-as human matter seems dead material-we are remindedof the obscenof the shockof animationor at leastof human recognition. ityof thistransition, This shock,the visceralregister is key, forthe viewer, too, to Resnais'snotorious use of Allied footagefromBelsen (shots 272-92). While thismaterialis taken fromlivefootage,Resnais edits it at first in a mannerrecallinghis use of stillphotos. We see each image for only a matterof seconds, again with a sense of the recrudescenceof desecration and outrage with everyimage. The bodies-dead

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and oftendecaying (we see a putrid emptyeye socket)-are still.The editingof the shots allows them to appear framedin stillphotographs.Yet Resnais pushes froma woman'sdead face in close-upto shotsof the bodies moved further, cutting of vulnerability as the return bybulldozers.These imagesbringwiththema fearful fleshmoved seems again fragile and pliable. Horroragain arises,forthe mostpart fromthe subjectof the images,yetalso fromtheirtendencyto disturbcategories. Whatwas stillis now movingonce more; the falsepietyof the camera's commemoration of still bodies is disrupted again as the bodies, the remnantsof human in offera grotesque image of mobility. There is a fearsome restlessness matter, Resnais's editing of these images, an insistencethat the viewingprocess will be farfromcomplacent. unsettled, unresolved, These are not Resnais'sshots;he does not author them,but in his editingof them he brings us to a new relation with their subjects. As we make category livefootageforstill the livingand dyingforthe dead, mistaking errors, mistaking our in the inability to to relation the Fear insists seen is disturbed. images, images an stillness from Resnais from dead matter. movement, brings distinguish living and motion interrupt uncannyhesitationto the viewingprocess in whichstillness each other,in whichimagesand footageare interposedone upon anotherwithan and rhythm thatbecome nauseatingand sick.These images,and the inexorability formalplay of stillnessand movementcreated fromthem,do not claim to represent the Muselmann to us. Rather,in riskily imitatingthe cognitivedisturbance and impossibility thatthe Muselmann embodies,Resnaismovesto make the images and brute of his filmunassimilable, ungraspable,despite theirattentionto matter for Resnais thus a the instills distrust in materiality. image, illustrating us quite the faults and of the literally failings viewingprocess,the manipulationsthatcan and veracity be achievedin editing.This is not even yeta questionof the reliability in of Resnais the newsreel reframes that (or otherwise) Nightand Fog. footage Whetheror not the images captured are authenticor staged,Resnais edits those images togetherin a bid to unsettlehow and what we see, to make the visceral shudder of the indeterminacy a momentof unknowing of livingand dead matter, and undoing of the viewer, the film. to the of key viewing V In the closingmomentsof the film, Resnaisshowsthreeshotsof corpses,the themas human bodies contorted, the structure of theirbones designating massed, matter. Each shotlastsforsix seconds. In the thirdthereis a full,expressive image of a man, his arm outstretched, his head tiltedback. To some degree the image resemblesa detail of a torsofromGericault's TheRaftoftheMedusa.Resnais's last image of outrage and bodilydamage is pictorialin its pickingout of this single man and the desperate exposure of his body and outreach of his gesture. His is to make art. He returnsto the impulse in Nightand Fog,howeverreluctantly, of issue with Raskin: "So there was as he discusses the vocabulary manipulation

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another problem which was the form of the film: how can you manipulate such a subject?"45 Continuing, he observes, "So since I am a formalist, perhaps I have to overcome my scruples and attempt to experiment formallyin this film, despite its subject."46 Later in the interview he comments on the interest that surrounded Nightand Fog and the numbers who saw the film and suggests simply: "perhaps you have to experiment formallyfor people to notice something."47 In "De la mort a la vie," Cayrol envisages the possibilityof art in response to the Holocaust. He names this art "lazarean," describing it as "an art arising directly from such a human convulsion."48In creating such "lazarean" art in Nightand Fog, Resnais focuses materially,as we have seen, on the trope of the living dead, on the body mortified and resuscitated, allowing his images to oscillate between petrification and the illusion of reanimation. His film depends on the editing, the manipulation of images of suffering and of desecrated bodies. His film in some senses cannot be divorced from a deadly productivityin which the body, and its suffering,are made into art. Night and Fog itself details the uses made of bodies and body parts in the infernal productivityof the camps. (As Charles Krantz writes: "Bones, human hair, body fat, nothing is to be 'wasted."')49 Resnais shows images from the museum at Auschwitz of piles of assembled objects: spectacles, garments, shoes massed together in random arrangement, their very abundance detracting from the specificityof the items. Charting this act of amassing, Resnais continues to broach the subject of obscenity. From clothes in shot 251, the camera moves in shot 252 to witness unfathomable, inchoate masses of women's hair-lifeless, dead matter. The camera moves over the hair, its masses filling the frame so its substance and nature loses any sense or identification. Moving relentlessly from the hair to packets in which it is sold, to the ghastly fabric into which it is transformed (panning across the rolls of fabric, their human fibers catching the light), Resnais closes in on matter and its metamorphosis; shots of massed bones are followed by formally similar,treacherously benign, shots of cabbages fertilized by human matter.We see the blocks of soap made fromhuman fat,the stretched skins of human victims. In Le Chant du styrene, as Edward Dimendberg has argued, Resnais takes us backward the through production process, from the plastic products to the oil that is their component, to the nexus of exploitation on which the very productivity of the plastic factory depends. In Night and Fog, this imbrication of productivity with human suffering,exploitation, and political sovereignty is viciously evident in the denatured forms of the human products of the camps. Night and Fog may itself

45. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 52. 46. Ibid., p. 52. Resnais continues here to discuss his use of interposedcolor and black-and-white and Fog. but does not offer in Night further of otherformal cinematography, analysis experimentation 47. Ibid., p. 59. 48. Cayrol,"De la morta la vie,"pp. 51-52. 49. and Fog History and Historiography," Krantz,"TeachingNight p. 3.

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recycleimages of the body,Resnais may manipulate the matterhe chooses, yet such productivity is used to decryitsmaligncounterpart. As in his experimentationwith still and moving images, so more broadly Resnais is concerned to unsettle his viewer (to irritateour senses in Bersani's of to bring us close to the matter, substance,and affect terms)and, in particular, the images he manipulates. He seeks indeed to make the image distressingly manipulable,tangible,sentient,graspable.This is a paradoxical, even impossible and Fog task in the visual medium that is cinema. Indeed one wayin which Night of its subject is works to remind us of the veryungraspabilityand invisibility at points,of the haptic overthe optic. throughitsprivileging, cinema "evoke memoLaura Marksargues thatmanyworksof intercultural ries both individual and cultural, through an appeal to nonvisual knowledge, embodied knowledge, and experiencesof the senses,such as touch,smell,taste."50 In particularshe is concernedwiththe wayscertainimagesappeal to a "haptic,or Such images invitethe viewerto respond in an embodied way. tactile,visuality."51 cinema begin from Marks's is that "manyworksof intercultural to Key thinking and the inabilityto speak, to represent objectivelyone's own culture, history, works are All these and are marked hesitation. memory;they by silence,absence, a lack of faithin the visual archive'sabilityto markedby a suspicion of visuality, representculturalmemory."52 Appeal to the haptic, to the senses and embodied She is for in thishesitation, thissuspicionofvisuality. Marks knowledge, originates nevertheclear in her studythather argumentis specificto intercultural cinema; less the effect of her disclosureof the sensorytextures of cinema as medium,and the appeal of her linking of such material filmmakingwith hidden, unseen, to other contexts.Resnais denied histories, her findings maytemptus to transfer is even briefly mentionedby Markswhen she speaks about the critique of ethnoViet She argues: "Trinh'sfilms Re: Assemblage (1982) and Surname graphicvisuality. Given NameNam (1989), like Chris Marker'sSans Soleil(1982), Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), Alain Resnais's Hiroshima monamour(1959), and Peter Kubelka's Unsere both use (1961-66), Afrikareise poetic and aggressivestrategiesto compel the viewer to consider the destructiveeffectsof believing that one can know alone."53In Hiroshima anothercultureor anothertime throughvisualinformation Resnais monamour, but also in Night his and Fogand through earlydocumentaries, in line with alone indeed information to register the limitsof visual and, appears the intercultural cinema Marks analyzes,to seek instead possibilitiesof a tactile
50. Embodiment and theSenses(Durham, N.C.: Laura Marks,TheSkinofthe Film:Intercultural Cinema, Duke University Press,2000), p. 2. of the 51. and imaginative a different, Ibid., p. 2. Giuliana Bruno offers investigation scintillating, and Film (New York:Verso, in Art,Architecture, haptic propertiesof filmin Atlas ofEmotion: Journeys 2002). Her further suggestive emphasis on the haptic as it relatesto movementthroughspace offers and monamour for thinking Resnais and the haptic (and she herselfdrawson Hiroshima possibilities Last Year in Marienbad). 52. Ibid., p. 21. 53. Ibid., p. 134.

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in a bid to change our relation to the image viewed and to finda more visuality even prehensilemode of representation. sensitive, prescient, Resnais's interestin touch and the image of hands and tactile contact has mon readilydrawncommentfromcritics,in particularin discussionof Hiroshima amour.54 of our we also want to stretch Marks, Following may apprehension the such literal to of contact. haptic beyond images Referring Deleuze's reading of Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959) in termsof the haptic, she writes:"To me, Deleuze's focus on filmicimages of hands seems a bit unnecessaryin termsof evokinga sense of the haptic. Looking at hands would seem to evoke the sense of touch throughidentification, eitherwiththe person whose hands theyare or with the hands themselves. The haptic bypassessuch identification and the distance fromthe image it requires."55 For Marks,prohapticpropertiesin video and film of underexposureand mightbe seen to be changes in focus,graininess,effects fromdistinguishShe sees these viewer the overexposure. techniquesdiscouraging She speaks more and a a whole. relation to the screen as ing objects encouraging of sensuous effects achieved generally through haptic imageryin combination withsound, camera movement, of the and montage; she speaks more specifically use of tactileclose-ups.Marksis concernedwithfilm(and video) as material, both in terms ofwhattheyrepresent and as media in themselves, and observesthatfilm and video become more haptic as theydie, as we witnesstheir gradual decay. the emulsion are all seen to work Optical printing,solarization,and scratching with the veryphysicalsurfaceof the medium. In wordswhich seem to resonate withResnais'sconcernsover Night and Fog,ifnot his visual tactics,she adds, "film can be actually workedwiththe hands."56 Marks'sworkmaysensitizeus to the hapticin Night andFog;yetthismaybe to revealthe waysin whichit is throughtouchand throughthe materialproperties of the medium thatResnais reflects(still) on the impossibility We of representation. move fromthe manipulationof editing-and the visceralshudderof animationas explored in the previous section to new, disturbing appeals to an embodied spectator. As mentionedabove, readingsof Night color footageshot and Fogdistinguish in 1955 by Resnais and black-and-white archive footage of the "past." Raskin's reassembledshooting scriptdesignatessequences of shots as either "present"or "past."Yetsuch demarcationis not entirely adequate. In his use of black-and-white Resnais still intercuts images photographsand newsreelfootage,as we have seen. More controversially, he also uses feature-film footage fromWanda Jakubowska's
54. monamour See, forexample,Jean-LouisLeutrat'sdiscussionof the tactilein his studyHiroshima (Paris: Nathan, 1994). 55. Marks,TheSkinofthe Film,p. 171. Marksrefersto Deleuze's reading in Cinema2: L'Image-temps (Paris: Minuit,1985), p. 22. 56. and Fog,Pathe Gaumontnewsreel(shot 6 in Ibid., p. 173. The first "past"imageswe see in Night the script),are physically damaged so thatwe see stainingand scratcheson the celluloid. The image is at timespartial and obscured on the screen. Resnais appears to draw attentionto the tactile,perishable materiality of the mediumfromthe start.

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The Last Stage (1948).57 Beyond this, there is black-and-whitefootage that is uncredited in Raskin's shooting scriptand which appears to have been shot by and are Resnais himself.58 The shotsI would isolatehave been filmedat Auschwitz shotsof objects,artifacts, and remains(forexample,shots 74-90, 156-58, 191-95, and 252). There is markedvisual similarity betweenthese shotsand the imagesof the museumobjects and statuesfilmedin Les Statues meurent aussi.These are shots thatprecisely and the tactile. privilegemateriality The first image in the sequence made up byshots74-90 is a close-upofa pair of staringeyes (accompanied in the commentary by the words:"Firstimpression: the camp is anotherplanet").59 the shotswe see laterof the This image anticipates fits man dying withhis eyeswide open (shot 174); in thiswaythe image grotesquely and generatesone of the image threadsof the film.Yet the image is disjunctive here too. Such a close-up,in whichwe see the eyesand nose alone, seems reminiscent of Surrealist photography, of its fragmentation of the body and transformation of the architectureof the human.60The scale of the image, its shock appearance, isolateit fromthe precedingimagesof Night and Fog.From the shootingscriptwe learn thatthe image is a close-upof an identity photo fromthe ink of a stampoverthe figmuseumat Auschwitz. we see the faint Looking closely, ure's right eye. Scratches on the photograph are also visible in the frame, the fact that it has been touched (even damaged) in emphasizingits tangibility, transit. This image "represents" a first view of the camp. Resnais showseyes that to the seem to stareblindly(like dead eyeslater). He drawsattention immediately of the image and the memoriesor tracesthatmaythusbe evokedas we materiality reckonwiththisimage as document,as materialevidenceof the anteriorpresence of thisindividual at Auschwitz. Later,in shots191-94, Resnaiswillshowclose-upsof hands opening-manipulating-an Italian passportfromMaidenek. He closes in on the photographsof Dutch identity papers and a French passportin whichwe the see the fullimage of an individual'sface,the stamp and the veryfingerprints, tactileimprint of the individual. The close-up of the eyes instantiatesa tension between Resnais's artistic both the subject endeavor-his creation of forms,of patterns-and the matter, and its veryremnantsand remains,whichhe manipulates.Key here is a move to make thismaterial of the patterns whenit seemsreminiscent disorienting, uncanny,
in 57. Images fromThe Last Stageappear as shot 71 (a shot of the arrivalof a train at Auschwitz and Fog [Raskin, Nuit et Brouillardby AlainResnais, Night p. 83]) and shot 155 (p. 100). 58. VincentPinel commentson thisin an IDHEC (Institut des hautes 6tudes cin6matographiques) thatsome 'Fiche filmographique' on Night and Fog,reproducedbyRaskin,pp. 142-46. But in asserting of the black-and-white shots appear to have been filmedby Resnais,Pinel citesas one of his examples the evocation of the arrivalat the camps (which,as we saw above, is in factextractedfrom TheLast Stage). 59. AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet Brouillardby p. 84. between 60. Several criticscommenton Resnais'searlyinterest in Surrealism and on the proximity some of his images and Surrealist and Benayoun,AlainResnais artworks.See Bounoure, Alain Resnais, of the de l'imaginaire. For further and the architecture discussionof Surrealist arpenteur photography human,see RosalindKrauss,TheOpticalUnconscious (Cambridge,Mass: MIT Press,1993).

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and experimentation of Westernart, yet also shockinglyunrecognizable as it refers to actual human experience. From the close-upof the identity photograph, the filmcuts to an overhead shot of hundreds of naked men assembled. The of these images in change in scale givesa small echo of the incommensurability relation to perceptionsof human identity and experience. Resnais returnsto an extreme close-up of a man with his head shaved, his eyes onlyjust withinthe frame.This returning, disorientingimage opens into a series of extreme closefilmed In shot 79 we see a man's arm tattooed. ups, arguably by Resnais himself. His forearmcrossesthe frame (looking forward to the angular body shots of the of Hiroshima mon marked and his skin (recallingthe ink over the amour) opening is contrasted in color and to the rough,stripedgartexture photographicimage) ments he wears. That this is live footage, thatwe see a certain hesitantmotion, further unsettles our relationto the image,presumably its statusas reconstruction its In shots Resnais's comes closer still to the camera 80-82, yet verypalpability. remnants fromthe camps.Wherewe see a numberstitched the camto a garment, era is close enough for us to see distinctly the individualthreadsof the uneven letterson fabric. The sewn insignia of sewing,the imprintof the handwritten theseshotsis brought close before our evidence,all but tangible up eyesas material as hinted the scale of Resnais's proof by footage. In latershotsResnaisoffers imagesof objects made in the camps.An upward shot revealsa carvedpuppet of Hitlerlyingalong a wooden beam (previtracking we shots of the beams in the blocks). The filmcuts to a ously have seen tracking shot of a carved crocodile; its life-size scale of the image and shading,quite apart fromits physicalform,make it resemble the shots of animal sculpturesof Les Statuesmeurent aussi. The filmcuts then to a box, half open, again seen in large scale. Resnaisshowsthe handiwork of the camp prisoners.In his close-ups,filmed we assume withhis own hands, Resnais conveyssomethingof the tangibility and of these objects,both the markers texture of deathlycodification-the tattoo,the The filmingof insignia-and the markersof human resistance and creativity. these objects brings a set of images witha different scale and presence to Night and Fog.These are images thatrespectand reflect of the the three-dimensionality the These material evidence and presence theyprovide. objects filmed, images may not entirely belong to the categoriesof the haptic that Marks outlines,but a tactileappreciationof theirsurfaceand substance. theysummon,nevertheless, In summoningthese objects and theirmaterialpresence Resnais seeks to bringus He makes it present to us up close to a hidden, denied, dematerializedhistory. shots that through disruptthe demarcationof past and presentin the film;they are in black and white,thus aligned pictorially withthe "past" in Raskins'ssense and with the archivefootage. Yet with no documentarysource, and apparently filmedby Resnais, theyare more properlypresentimages of past evidence that remainspresent,obtrudesin itsvery insists, materiality. and Fog Resnaissilently Filmingin black and whiteat Auschwitz, alignsNight with his earlier documentary films, Van Gogh (1948), Gauguin (1949), and

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a tacticsforthinking of art and traumain tandem. In Guernica Resnais constructs from to the 1937 Paul Eluard and via a text response collaged images bombing by Picasso (the Guernica but also a numberof otherpaintings).At paintingprimarily, moments he makes the painted figuresemerge out of dark backgroundsin an attemptto offeran illusion of animation to still images. As he representsthe he uses extremely bombing itself, rapid editing; Picasso's franticanimal images, bulls, horses, and contorted human figuresflash in frontof our eyes. Resnais shows shots of hands, of mouths, of tongues. In images of body parts, Resnais recalls sentient flesh (which he will show literallyin Nightand Fog), but all he showsus is its fine,aestheticafterimage. These morbid,mobile images hide the as of Guernica as also to its horror. reality they They functionsimultaneously point both testimony and veil. Resnaisdisplays ambivalencetowardart;his veryearlydocumentariesall representand animate the workof modern painters,but afterGuernica he does not return to thisenterprise. He moveson fromthe twodimensionsof paintingto the three-dimensional spectacle of the museum space. Resnais is waryof it, though fascinated In Hiroshima monamour, the Frenchwoman can clearly byits structures. see nothingat Hiroshima,despite her fourvisitsto the museum. Both Les Statues models in miniature, decontextualizedobjects behind panes of glass. In sending his protagonist and camera out onto the streetsin Hiroshima,in circlingthe statues in Les Statuesmeurent aussi and imagining something of their historyand seeks a Resnais more mobile,three-dimensional, even haptic encounter reference, withhistory and its materialrelics than the conventionalmuseum provides.His of objects mightbe aligned, indeed, withAndreas Huyssen'sreflections filming on the new possibilitiesof the museal gaze. Huyssen speaks of the registerof the object carries,and the waysin which the gaze at museal thingsresists reality the progressive This move depends on circulaof the world.61 dematerialization and tion around objects,on the mobilizationof memoriesin a siteof contestation and Resnais'sfilming of objects in Night negotiation.Such movesseem to motivate Fog,in particularin his bid to bring us up close to objects, to animate them and behind glass. bringthemout from Resnais's approach to the tactile is, however,more ambivalent than this account so far suggests. As with the filming of the hair in the museum at of a materialsubstance-human clippings-allows us Resnais'sfilming Auschwitz, but as the no purchase on the mattershown.The camera is mobile, ambulatory, hair entirely and cognifills the frame, the image exceeds our grasp (both physical tive). There is no frame,no explanatorycontext,for such a mass of shorn hair, and the image-which has appeared horribly tactile-morphs into unassimilable
61. Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories:Marking Time in a Culture ofAmnesia (New York: Routledge, 1995).

aussi; he refers us implicitly to his previous Guernica,as well as Les Statues meurent

meurent aussi and Hiroshimamon amourpresent shots of museum visitors faced with

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abstraction.At the end of Nightand Fog,afterthe three parting images of the dead, one reminiscentof G6ricault, Resnais cuts to color footage of marshes, which is suddenly disorientingin its formand scale (shot 303). We see marsh watersin liquid, glaucous patterns, as we fearwhat tranquilperhapsyetdistressing as their mass and recall texture cover, they bodilymess and excmaysubliminally reta. Coming closer to Marks'snotion of the haptic,Resnais offers us images over whichwe have no mastery. In theirmove towardabstraction, theychallenge the viewerto suspend the desireto make sense and to respondinsteadwiththe senses. As theyfillthe screen,these images equallyscreen us fromthe previousimagesof the camps; theyappear to draw attentionto their own screeningstatus as they obstruct our viewand suspend reference. The haptic,withits sensory presence,its and reminds us of all of and the screen our vision scale, large enveloping impedes thatcannot be seen. VI In the textures of these late images and theirinsistent to the right, tracking Resnais recalls a scene that will draw to a close this argument. In shot 237, at Maidenek,Resnaistakeshis camera inside the gas chamber.The camera pans over the ceilingof the chamber, and the image showsconcreteimprinted, damaged, by human presence. A voice-overnarrates:"The only traces now, if you knowwhat There is an theyare, are on the ceiling.Scrabblingnails scoringeven concrete."62 relation here serves between the the shots. The voice-over and voice-over explicit an explanatory function. as over this scarred the camera moves concrete,in a Yet, shot this human markthe relation between the single tracking palpable record, and the to offer material which of bear and which witness, ings atrocity they they animate and and In his between move proof,challengesrationality sense-making. inertmatter, Resnaisoffers malleableconcrete. evidencein the formof grotesquely The gougingof thisseemingly it embodies, adamantsubstance,and the oxymoron and nauseates these the have no on viewer. We challenges images, purchase tactile,a record of the deathly, images that are abusively devastatingimprintof dyinghands on concrete.Resnais bringsus up close to these images. He presents us with this literal imprint,followingthe logic of his presentation of material tracesand remainsthroughout reminishis filmmaking. tactile,formally Expressly cent of a number of other shots withinthe film,these images are nevertheless unassimilableas we resist obtrusive, radically disjunctive, lettingthemmake sense, as we resistthe categorydisturbancetheyrepresent.Grazing the surfaceof the concrete,lettingthe human marksthat remain fillthe screen, Resnais's filming over the image Lack of mastery signalsthese marksas untouchable,unassimilable. be may signaledas the haptic is privilegedover the optic; as used byResnais such

62.

AlainResnais, Raskin,Nuitet brouillardby p. 117.

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haptic images,howeverclose theycome to the mattertheyrepresent,remindus of thistraumaticpast. This image and intractibility heavilyof the untouchability in Night and Fogwithinthe gas chamber takes us back to Lanzmann's comments. his film Resnais shows us imprintsin concrete,which remain cavities,fissuring and its moves towardreference. Fromwithinthe gas chamberhe remindsus that we can neithertouch nor look on this.