Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Night Will Fall is a documentary of remarkable historical and moral weight. Its cinematography category reflects the extraordinary — and harrowing — original footage captured by Allied cameramen at the liberation of Nazi camps, images of undeniable power that shaped the world's understanding of the Holocaust. The novelty is high because the film's story is genuinely singular: the restoration of a suppressed wartime documentary that Hitchcock himself advised on, finally completed 70 years later, is a unique archival and historical event unlike almost anything else in documentary cinema. The plot (narrative structure) is solid and purposeful, weaving the behind-the-scenes history of the suppressed film with the footage itself, though it follows a fairly conventional documentary arc. Acting is rated low as there are no performances per se — the human element comes through archival footage and narration. The ending, while sobering and appropriate, does not transcend the material in a particularly distinctive way, leaving it at an above-average but not exceptional level.