Unseen Alfred Hitchcock Holocaust documentary to be released

[GivenToFly]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/10/unseen-alfred-hitchcock-holocaust-documentary-screening

An Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust, which was suppressed for political reasons, is to be screened for the first time in the form its director intended after being restored by the Imperial War Museum, reports the Independent.

Hitchcock was asked to assemble footage shot by a British army film unit cameraman of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. But the resulting documentary, which had been commissioned in an attempt to inform and educate the German populace about the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in their name, was ultimately held back.

It was not shown at all until 1984, in an incomplete version at the Berlin film festival, and was missing a sixth reel and in poor quality when it was screened on the PBS network in the US a year later. Now the film, retrospectively titled Memory of the Camps, is to finally see the light of day in a format Hitchcock would have approved of.

"It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British," Dr Toby Haggith, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum, told the Independent. "Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there."

Haggith said the film, shown at test screenings, extremely disturbed colleagues, experts and film historians. The film's narration, which has been re-recorded with a new actor, features descriptions of "sightseers" at a "chamber of horrors".

"The digital restoration has made this material seem very fresh," said Haggith. "One of the common remarks was that it [the film] was both terrible and brilliant at the same time."

The film is due to be broadcast on British television in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe. It will be accompanied by a new documentary from André Singer, a producer on the acclaimed 2013 film The Act of Killing, which has topped a number of critical best of the year lists, including the Guardian's. Both films will be shown at film festivals and cinemas later this year.

[DieselDaisy]

Sounds interesting. He did two war era shorts also about the French Resistance. They are on the Lifeboat dvd.

[GivenToFly]

Satanisk Slakt, please go see it!

[Len Cnut]

It's been on youtube forever.

[DieselDaisy]

I think you need to re-read the first paragraph of that again.

[Len Cnut]

I know, just thought I'd say in case anybody wanted to watch one of the versions thats out there.

[Nosaj Thing]

That's great news!

[Val22]

This movie was on cable last night.

I started to watch it but got very upset.

I actually dvr ed it at a later time.

I have seen a lot of footage of what the Nazis did to their prisons in the concentration camps, but seeing those British soldiers carrying those poor dead souls and putting them in a huge grave to bury them, was just too much. As I listened to them talking over the film about how they had to think of other things while doing this terrible ordeal, it was still shocking to me how men could do this to other human beings.

I felt ashamed to be a human being. It still disgusts me and gets me very angry that this actually occurred and how much those poor people suffered and died so horribly.

To think that you were going to be moved to other homes and painfully taking things that mattered so much to you because you were limited as to what to bring with you and only to realize you were going to your death.

They showed mountains of glasses, toys, and other items.

those Nazi bastards even took the hair off the women's heads to use. The English man said nothing was wasted after death.

I can't imagine the fear once they realized they were going to their deaths. It was bad enough being separated from your husband and children and then stripped naked to be gassed to death or starved to death.

All I keep doing is asking myself, how could men be so cruel and how did this not affect them in anyway. Just seeing that man being nothing but skin and bones being carried so carefully by that man will stick with me until the day I die.

I don't want to sound dramatic, but it's important to always remember what was done to innocent people who were put to death because of their beliefs. I hope there's a special place in hell for all those men who participated in this horrible crime against humanity. As for following orders, I would rather die than do what they did to those people.

[dontdamnmeuyi2015]

Just watched some of this movie. After the British dropped it, the US took over the film.

This show helped convict and put in jail many of those horrible Nazis that did those horrible cruel things to so many innocent people.

Still can't wrap my head around how this all happened? It makes me sick to my stomach to think what savages men can be to each other.