Night and Fog

This lyrical and graphic documentary--one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust's horror--has deeply affected film's treatment of the Holocaust ever since, including Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Documentarian Alain Resnais contrasts 1955 footage of abandoned concentration camps' quiet, empty buildings with black-and-white footage shot there in 1944; the film's overwhelming resonance comes in its allowing the haunting images to stand on their own: a grainy, back-lit hill of human hair--long, women's hair; a pyramid of shoes.