Visual narrative on the liberation of the extermination camps: analysis of Night will Fall (André Singer, 2014)

Abstract

In our paper, we strive to undertake a specific narrative analysis of Night Will Fall (André Singer, 2014), the British Film Institute production that celebrates the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps. It is a very recent object of study and its historical importance is beyond question: It strives to clarify the relations between the images taken at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau or Auschwitz (among other important lagers or camps) and the famous unfinished propaganda movie developed by Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock. In the analysis, we briefly include the first cut of this material, Memory of the Camps, screened for the first time in 1985. To achieve our goal, we use a methodology based on the traditional studies of audiovisual narratology focusing on two specific aspects: firstly, the analysis of the structure of the film shows how Night will Fall is based on a classical division into three acts: and secondly, we analyse the different levels of enunciation. It will be demonstrated that this new documentary is built on the laws of the classical expository documentary: it uses the classical voiceover without any critical resonances and it uses the different witnesses (members of the army, survivors, audiovisual crew or historians) to show the impression of a clear unity in the discourse.