Nuit et brouillard [Synchronfassung DDR 1960]

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Night and Fog [German version GDR 1960]

Nuit et brouillard [Synchronfassung DDR 1960]
Alain Resnais
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
France
1955
31 minutes
German
subtitles: 
None

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Alain Resnais
Anatole Dauman
Samy Halfon
Philippe Lifchitz
Alain Resnais
Henri Colpi
Ghislain Cloquet
Sacha Vierny
Hanns Eisler
Henryk Keisch
Raimund Schelcher

“Le sang a caillé, les bouches se sont tues,” Jean Cayrol writes. Henryk Keisch translates: “The blood has dried, the mouths have fallen silent.” When Resnais’ film was to be licensed for theatrical release in the GDR, it seemed obvious to resort to the West German dubbed version. But Celan’s translation failed to meet the approval of DEFA. They found fault with elisions that, for example, omitted the deportees from the Soviet Union. The official correspondence ended on an apodictic note: The acquisition was considered “irresponsible”. The writer and translator Henryk Keisch, loyal to the party line, was commissioned to write a new version – and of course made up for Celan’s omissions.

Sylvia Görke