concentration camps

Marlene Dietrich Extras by Karina Longworth

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If this week's episode on Marlene Dietrich piqued your interest in this fascinating broad, two things.

First: I forgot to mention in the show notes Maximilian Schell's incredible, experimental documentary on Marlene, called (as so many things about her are) Marlene. This is by no means a conventional biographical documentary, to its credit -- it's actually rather advanced Dietrich studies. I love it. It's on Amazon Instant video, iTunes, etc.

Second: last night I happened to catch on HBO a harrowing film called Night Will Fall, which tells the story of a British documentary shot primarily during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps which was, for various reasons explained in the film, never finished or released. Alfred Hitchcock was brought on at some point as the director of this shelved, and ultimately suppressed film. This was actually first brought to my attention by a post on our forum by Moominmama, and so once I realized it was on TV last night I was excited to watch it anyway. However, I didn't know that the film would include a rather substantial segment on the concentration camp documentary on which Billy Wilder worked, Death Mills, which I mentioned in the Marlene Dietrich episode. Night Will Fall even includes clips from Wilder's film, and much more backstory than what I was able to include in the episode. And it is also full of really powerful footage of survivors and victims of the camps, so, watch at your own risk (I admit that I did not sleep well last night), but do watch.