Reviews
CONTROL Room (12) 87min
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NiGHT AND FOG (15) 32min .0...
ELVIS: ‘68 COMEBACK SPECIAL (E) 440mm 9 .' ' ....
The thing about anniversaries is that it's all about how you mark the occasion. This January is indelibly stained by two moments of remembrance: one a cause for great sorrow and contemplation. the other. a cause of great celebration.
It was on 27 January 1945. 50 years ago that advancing Soviet troops discovered Hitler's lethal secret when they entered the Auschwitz camp in Poland, in essence beginning the liberation of that camp and all those of its kind. Fictional film portrayals of the hell that was the Final Solution have ranged from the well meaning and melodramatic (Schindler's List. Sophie ’5 Choice) to the intelligently compelling (Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker). Ultimately though it is only the documentary film genre that can really hold the weight of this subject that can so easily overwhelm. There have been loads of honourable additions to this canon from Claude Lanzmann's nine hour Shoah to Stephen Trombley’s 50 minute Nuremberg. It is. however, Alain Resnais’ 1955 film Night and Fog that remains the most vivid depiction of the horrors of the Nazi camps. It contains 32 painful minutes of stock footage combining new footage from around the deserted Auschwitz site with older, more gut churning film. Tied together by Jean Cayrol’s poetic script and Michel Bouquet's narration. Night and Fog packs a punch like few others. Emotionally and intellectually raw but unflinching, it should be watched alone in silence. It will remind you off the all too heavy weight of history.
On a lighter note, Elvis would have been 70 years old on 8 January, a fact that has been all too successfully exploited by the re-release of the man’s 17 No 1 singles. If you fancy celebrating the king‘s birthday in style then you really can’t do any better than checking out the selection of Elvis live DVDs, which have been released over the last few years. Aloha From Hawaii (BMG) and That’s the Way It Is (Warner, pictured) are both fantastic but the true aficionado will remember the boy from Tupelo, Mississippi by sitting down with the complete three disc special deluxe edition of Elvis’ 68 Comeback Special concert. It will send shivers up your spine. Black leather and African American session dancers have never been used to better effect. ‘If I can dream of a warmer sun/Where hope keeps shining on everyone/Tell me why, oh why, oh why won‘t that sun appear?‘ Indeed. (Paul Dale)
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THE LIST 49