It's hard to say whether this film is really about the concentration camps. It certainly isn't about the holocaust. Its themes are broader, in a genocide style that represents all crimes against humanities that have ever been committed and are being committed to this day. The images are clear, but in 1955 it was still too early to make a film about the holocaust.
Sure, some elements of the Holocaust itself are there. And they do not only lie in the images of the Nazi concentration camps, the vivid and painful to watch ones. They also lie in the score, that at first is more reminding of a romantic documentary work of Robert Flaherty, and then tricks you in thinking that after all, you are quite alright if you are watching this. This is the same fake-safety feeling that the people in the concentration camps must have felt as orchestras played as the executions were carried out.
At the end of the day, the film is about humanity, and whether we are humans after all. It's the sort of cry that can't be answered. "Who is responsible" asks the monotone narrative voice, and that question is followed by the picture of a weak looking man, his head shaved, his eyes fearfully staring right at us.
It's one of the only documentaries I have ever seen that knows what it's doing what the footage it has. It doesn't need to be manipulated, it doesn't need to be distorted. And the narration is not a voice of God; it's a human voice, that adds to the impact. The narrator himself seems as shocked and as mortified as we are. This is not a film about the images, and the importance they carry. It's a film about our reaction to the sight of these images.
Sure, some elements of the Holocaust itself are there. And they do not only lie in the images of the Nazi concentration camps, the vivid and painful to watch ones. They also lie in the score, that at first is more reminding of a romantic documentary work of Robert Flaherty, and then tricks you in thinking that after all, you are quite alright if you are watching this. This is the same fake-safety feeling that the people in the concentration camps must have felt as orchestras played as the executions were carried out.
At the end of the day, the film is about humanity, and whether we are humans after all. It's the sort of cry that can't be answered. "Who is responsible" asks the monotone narrative voice, and that question is followed by the picture of a weak looking man, his head shaved, his eyes fearfully staring right at us.
It's one of the only documentaries I have ever seen that knows what it's doing what the footage it has. It doesn't need to be manipulated, it doesn't need to be distorted. And the narration is not a voice of God; it's a human voice, that adds to the impact. The narrator himself seems as shocked and as mortified as we are. This is not a film about the images, and the importance they carry. It's a film about our reaction to the sight of these images.