From 1933, the GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit produced many documentaries, inspired by the likes of Nanook of the North (1922), to promote their service. The films had many talented British film-makers working for them, including the likes of Basil Wright and Alberto Cavalcanti (both on the production team here), and have recently been released in three DVD collector's editions by the British Film Institute. As well as producing some damn fine films, they are key works in understanding the mentality and living conditions of a Britain long gone, when we took pride in our work. They are both uplifting in their detail and wholly depressing given the state of Britain today. I'm only 26 and feel this way, so God knows what the old folk must think.
Night Mail follows the midnight postal train from London to Scotland, looking at various things such as the sorting room, the loading of the train, and the inspired way of collecting mail from various places by catching the bags at high speeds in a retracting net. The last ten minutes features a now famous poem by W.H. Auden, read to the music of Benjamin Britten, that is read rhythmically to the sounds of the train. Starting slow, it gradually picks up pace as the train gets faster, and ends at a breathless pace.
Finishing at around the 30 minute mark, it leaves a great impression regardless of its slight running time. As mentioned before, it manages to capture the spirit of old Britain, and of a time when our public services were actually efficient. Now, the Post Office seems to lose more mail than it delivers, and if you're lucky to catch a train that arrives on time, you have the pleasure in sitting near some gormless scumbag listening to his shit dance music out loud, or some lazy fat single mother who won't deal with their screaming baby. But anyway, the quality of the film-making is often overwhelming for a documentary short, using interesting camera angles, lovely cinematography, and informative narration. I was surprised to see that the average user rating for this on IMDb is 6.8, considering this is one of the best, and most important documentaries to come out Britain. Ever.
Whilst this is a 'short' film, running at only 30 minutes, it packs an incredible and potent image of the abuse of power; the abuse of ideas which were perpetuated at the beginning of the 20th century, and interpreted for sinister and horrific purposes. Night and Fog displays the horrors of the holocaust, and leaves indelible images that will never leave your mind.
The film opens with the derelict remains of 1950's Auschwitz. A narrator (Michel Bouquet) poetically describes the haunted emptiness of the area, a place were no person enters, but the ghosts of genocide still hang in the air, putrefying the very essence of place. Night and Fog mixes both the contemporary images of Auschwitz with documentary footage filmed by the Allied troops as they entered the grounds where thousand of malnourished, dead people lay strewn about; haunted death masks of anguish, hunger and desperation. The film shows the perversion of the Nazi's, with their seeming obsession with collecting every single element left by all the Jews, homosexuals and disabled dead. We see mountains of glasses, shoes, clothes, and even hair, kept for the records of a moment in history most would like to forget.
But, this is a moment in human history that we should never forget, for as we are told, this is something that happened and therefore it can happen again. (Which of course it did in both Cambodia and Bosnia in the 1970's and 1990's respectively). Toward the end of the film, the narrator poses the significant question - after we are shown Nazi officers in the dock stating that they are "not responsible" - 'who is responsible'? No single person can be held accountable for systematic torture, humiliation and ultimately death on people not seen to fit into a socio-political ideology of racial 'purification'.
Another film released 30 years later, also used the haunting images of the derelict concentration camps, but did not documentary imagery of the starving, abused prisoners. Claude Lanzmann's landmark film Shoah (1985) used interviews with survivors, members of the public who lived around these camps, and even Nazi officers to encapsulate a similar amount of pathos for the 'horrible' history. At a mammoth 9 and a half hours, it is quite surprising to find the 30 minute Night and Fog contain as much (perhaps even more) power to disturb and to (in a way) educate the spectator.
It really drives home the message that this is something that has happened before, and will certainly happen again. We are left with images of death. The camera pans across piles of dead people - something that clearly influenced Stan Brakhage's film of death and pathology, The Act of Seeing With Ones Own Eyes (1971). We are left with a strong message. One that we should heed. For, if we were to see such horrors on our own doorstep, would we turn a blind eye, as so many did during this period. Of course we should not. But it seems to be human nature to glance the other way when horrors occur. How many of us can say that if we see someone in distress in the street at the hands of human violence, would get involved? And if this were turned into violence on a mass scale, would we intervene?
Night Mail follows the midnight postal train from London to Scotland, looking at various things such as the sorting room, the loading of the train, and the inspired way of collecting mail from various places by catching the bags at high speeds in a retracting net. The last ten minutes features a now famous poem by W.H. Auden, read to the music of Benjamin Britten, that is read rhythmically to the sounds of the train. Starting slow, it gradually picks up pace as the train gets faster, and ends at a breathless pace.
