ABSTRACT
The French film-maker Alain Resnais's most famous documentary – Nuitet brouillard – and his first three feature films – Hiroshima mon amour, L'Annee derniere a Marienbad and Muriel – address delicate issues raised by the Second World War and by the conduct of the war in Algeria. The film progressively reveals the reason: his participation in the final phase of the torture to death of a young Algerian woman, Muriel. Nuitet brouillard is an extraordinarily powerful film which from its first appearance served, and continues to serve, the purpose for which it was commissioned. But its success as an act of commemoration is bought at a price of exclusion, simplification and lack of explicitness. The discrepancies between action, belief and feeling are explained by the single instance of an act of commemoration in Resnais's early films, the funeral of Diego's fellow militant, Carlos.
