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In a previous life, as Germanic Studies PhD student, I spent a lot of time studying the aesthetic challenges of Holocaust representation (including how that Greek word meaning burnt offering might not be the best word for it), Night and Fog is one of the first efforts at telling the broad story of Auschwitz that wasn’t as dry or as horrifyingly detailed as the court cases of the perpetrators. It’s an impressive aesthetic and ethical achievement that succeeds better at its ethical premise than the Searchers could ever manage considering that mythmakers are rarely able to reckon with the consequences of their myths and I don’t get the sense that John Wayne really wanted to do that. So it’s a vote for Night and Fog for me, I suspect it will be the last opportunity to do so.
The Searchers is clearly well-made; John Wayne doing some of his best work. You can feel it reckoning with the very genre itself. I don't think it's totally successful at doing that. And it's not that I require someone to look in the camera and say "John Wayne is bad", more that John Ford and co. are either out of their depth or unable to totally commit to what this type of revision needs. Plus, I just don't think many of the comic detours land and at their worst they dive into some pretty hoary racism.
Night and Fog gets my vote for being so clear-eyed and really just for the importance of holding witness, especially so soon after the Holocaust. It's a showcase for cinema being more than just story or even emotion, but rather informative and art.
From Chicago. Art vs entertainment's seems to be the theme of this round. But The Searchers is the epitome of both. Just go ahead and mark my vote now for any film competing against The Searchers in future rounds, please. This will save us both some time.