Only half an hour long, this is the greatest film ever made about the concentration camps (1956). Directed by Alain Resnais from a script by camp survivor Jean Cayrol (who subsequently scripted Muriel), it’s a perfect riposte to the eyewash of a New Yorker writer a few years back that Resnais, like Bergman, is noted for his metaphysical touch. If there’s a less metaphysical movie on the subject of the camps I haven’t seen it. Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 Shoah is so indebted to this film that it never could have been conceived, much less made, without Resnais’ example, and Schindler’s List is a cartoon alongside it. In French with subtitles. (JR)