“The only sign—but you have to know—is this ceiling, dug into by fingernails. Even the concrete was torn.” This “but you have to know” (mais il faut savoir, in the original French) has a double meaning: a) you wouldn’t see it unless tipped off to what it meant and; b) you must take this in now, you can no longer escape knowing it.
— Phillip Lopate (Criterion)
Although the full details of France’s role in the murder of French Jews was not fully known until decades after the release, Resnais did put in a still that showed Jewish deportees being guarded by a French policeman, an image that the censors ordered to be removed.
— Colin MacCabe (Criterion)
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.