IOBdennis Last night I watched a documentary I had recorded previously on HBO: "Night Will Fall". It is a documentary of the filming of the macabre consequences after the Holocaust by Alfred Hitchcock (and Billy Wilder secondarily). It is positively harrowing. As a film, it isn't well put together. Like another reviewer here, I couldn't rate the film itself higher because I just didn't think it was assembled very well.It has a sub-text in which the British and Americans vie over the making of the actual documentary which isn't told very well. It's scattered, superficial, and in the long-run rather pointless. But as for its major subject matter, the extermination of so many men, women, and children, it is relentless. It is brutally blunt, and in that there's a point: how the hell can you put together images of such atrocities artistically? You can only record (document) the horror. I cannot get those images out of my head.

HEFILM A fascinating film. A horrifying film. To be clear this is not the documentary about SS concentration camps that was left unfinished, and suppressed after the war. That film can be seen elsewhere. To be clear, having seen that film, this documentary does leave out just a few key elements. The original film goes out of it's way to say these camps were not only for Jews and lists all the nationalities and religions that came to be killed here. So to say that film is about the Holocaust is not entirely true and is specifically not the point of the original film.What this film does is set the discovery of the camps and the aftermath into context both large--the governments involved, and small--the military camera crews and even some camp survivors who are seen both now and in the vintage footage. A real feat to find these people so many years later.Sure you may think you've seen this all before, both in fiction films and in various documentary ones. But this still packs a punch, perhaps even more so since you will think you already know all there is to know. I've spent a lot of my life studying WW2 and I was still blown away by this film. I'm also a Hitchcock fan, and his name is being used to "sell" this film and the restoration and completion of the original documentary.A point made in this excellent film is that the intention was to make a documentary that was a warning that unless what happened in Germany is seen and understood that 'night will fall' again and these type of large scale inhumanity will re-occur. Of course you can argue that does in fact happen.This film shows footage not used in the original documentary and is as much about those who made the film as it is about everything else. Interestingly it talks about Hitchcock's input to help make the film convincing. The horrors of reality being so unreal that they might seem created for effect. You can also see in some of the dead faces some dead faces that will appear in Hitchcock's own fiction films after this one.This film also contrasts the film which was suppressed with the film that did get finished and released--that version being supervised by Billy Wilder. The makers of this film obviously preferring Hitchcock's version.And fans of both great directors will see their hand in how they shaped material shot by others. The camp footage was shot by army camera men without a director being there.The graphic concentration camp footage is very graphic but focuses on the horrible expressions on the faces of the dead that is what makes it overwhelming and gripping.Very little music is used, the voice over work is first rate as is haunting sound effects work. Part of what Night Will Fall does, by being a behind the scenes making of film is help to show just how real and unstaged these horrors of war were. It is hard to watch this film and come away thinking somehow all this was made up just for the sake of the Jews. In fact its impossible to believe that after you see this film.Once more let me say this is not the so called Hitchcock film, though portions of that are shown within this film. That you have to seek out elsewhere and see for what it is, it has different things to show and say. This is almost an extended preview and background that helps viewing that film.

richard6 Night Will Fall is a potent documentary produced by the British Imperial War Museum covering the consequences of Nazi brutality towards Jews, Slavs and man, women or child considered inferior. As the Allied forces of Great Britain, United States and Canada advanced on the Western and Southern area of Germany, evidence of actual rumored, reported, alleged, speculated and widely believed accounts of state sponsored systematic murdered became distressingly real to the liberating soldiers.The documentary (originally titled: German Concentration Camps factual Survey) contains recently restored actual footage of Nazi atrocities filmed in 1945 by Army camera crews on instructions by the British Psychological War Division. A plentiful amount of footage was gathered throughout the duration of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz Concentration Camps. Originally, the footage was intended for a 1945 release to highlight the horrors hidden from public view, ignored by others, advocated by some the shocking truth discovered, which later became termed; The Holocaust.Likewise the film makers intended not only to reveal the truth; yet, to edit, clarify and comment on what the world can learn from the reality of in-humanity still unimpaired and unforgettable to many. This restored footage is then inter-cut between interviews and melancholy testaments from British, American and Soviet soldiers, or camp survivor who witnessed the act of atrocities or its aftermath. Evoking as these testaments and interviews are, the uneasy commentary by The BBC War Correspondent Richard Dimbley who witnessed the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen is made even-more dismaying by the revelation that British Intelligence, skeptical of his statement, refrained the BBC from transmitting his broadcast to the public for a week after the April 1945 liberation in order to factually confirm the unbelievable horrors uncovered. Dismaying are also the incitable testaments from a Soviet perceptive of what was similarly, yet more eerie witnessed during the Red Armies liberation of the camps in Poland. Decorously, the documentary-makers have rightfully included a few captivating scenes of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz. Granted, the images captured by Soviet film-crews are truly worthy of admiration. Unfortunately, because these scenes, combined with the commentary of Soviet War Correspondents, are so captivating, more should have been contained. Engaging, is also the explanation of film-makers and Producers Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein and their involvement in the documentary.Night Will Fall is a well presented, somber in commentary, extremely graphic in detail and at times may-be distressing to the viewer. Not only is the visual evidence of The Holocaust painfully revealing; yet, what is also represented is the advanced practices of reporting and commentary of War Correspondences combined with use of newly formed Army Camera Crews. Both methods intended for public exhibition; the original footage captured and the correspondence were innovating in 1945 for allowing the general public, authorised by the Government, with relatively minimal censoring, to bear witness in full overwhelming scenes of war crimes. Therefore, Night Will fall is clear in its focus, effective in its message and one of the best produced documentaries on The Holocaust.

Fool in the Fields 'German Concentration Camp Factual Survey' was a powerful Holocaust documentary that spent decades in limbo for very dubious reasons. Filmed at the end of World War II, it was only recently completed in a full-length restoration by London's Imperial War Museum. The project has long been part of forgotten movie history, partly because directing legends Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder were both involved in creating it.The completed documentary adds Brett Ratner and Stephen Frears as producers. The director is André Singer, whose own production credits include multiple Werner Herzog projects and 'The Act of Killing'.In the spring of 1945, with victory in sight, Allied forces encountered the full horror of the Nazi concentration camps as gained more and more ground. The liberation of slave labor and extermination camps including Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald were recorded by traumatized military film crews from the UK, the US and Russia. The horrifying images they collected of corpses and mass graves shocked the world.Under the command of British director Sidney Bernstein, the footage was shipped back to London as raw material for a film designed to inform about the cruelty of the Nazi regime, especially among ordinary Germans who still claimed ignorance of mass murder next door. Bernstein assembled a team including writer and future government minister Richard Crossman. Hitchcock also took a break from his Hollywood career to offer suggestions on style of the film. Billy Wilder edited some of the footage into a 22-minute newsreel-style short for U.S. audiences, called 'Death Mills'. But by the fall of 1945, as the political situation changed in the eyes of the British government, Bernstein's work-in-progress was quietly shelved by the UK government. Though clips from Bernstein's incomplete documentary were permitted to be shown during the Nuremberg trials, it remained unfinished for almost 70 years.The documentation 'Night Will Fall' fills in the back story of the film, from its battlefield origins to its restoration process. Singer and his team blend archive footage and contemporary interviews with elderly military veterans, members of the original film crews, historians and Holocaust survivors, including Branko Lustig, producer of Schindler's List. Wilder appears briefly in library clips. Hitchcock makes does his to be expected cameo. The documentary was already part of Berlinales' 2014 "Work in progress" - section.As an important historical and educational document, 'Night Will Fall' is unquestionably a must see. A little more investigation into the backstage machinations that forced the shelving of the original footage would also have been welcome but nevertheless the film is filled with shocking truth that always is in danger to be ignored.