Sorrow And The Pity

Often hailed as one of the greatest documentaries of all time, The Sorrow and the Pity is still astonishing long after its original release in Paris. The lengthy film (anyone who has heard it prominently referred to in Woody Allen's Annie Hall knows it's four hours long) tells the story of France under Nazi occupation by weaving together a number of interviews as well as newsreel clips and propaganda films shot by the Nazis. Director Marcel Ophüls skillfully utilizes interviews with people who often contradict each other, so the story of France not only occupied but divided against itself emerges fully. Filmed in the late 1960s, when bitter memories still resonated, the interviews conducted by Ophüls have great depth and are often amazing. Ordinary Frenchmen who found themselves performing heroic acts for the Resistance recall the dangers they faced while those who collaborated with the Nazis make excuses. A former Nazi officer interviewed at a wedding party in Germany pompously puts a benign face on what occurred where he was stationed; interviews with French residents utterly refute his sanitized version of the past. Beyond the interviews, the arresting archival footage chosen by Ophüls is remarkable, such as an unsettling clip of a stand-up comedian performing before a laughing audience whose collar insignias identify them as members of the fanatical Nazi SS. The Sorrow and the Pity lives up to its reputation as being a magnificent documentary. --Robert J. McNamara

A chronicle of a French city under the occupation. Director Marcel Ophuls combined interviews and archival film footage to explore the reality of the French occupation in one small industrial city, Clermont-Ferrand. He spoke with resistance fighters, collaborators, spies, farmers, government officials, writers, artists and veterans. The result is a shattering portrait of how ordinary people actually conducted themselves under extraordinary circumstances. By turns gripping, horrifying, and inspiring, Academy Award nominee "The Sorrow and the Pity" is a triumph of humanist filmmaking and a testament to the power of cinema. Before "Shoah," "Schindler's List," "The Long Way Home" and "The Last Days," there was "The Sorrow and the Pity."

Trailer

Made for French television, Marcel Ophls' four-hour-plus documentary explores the average French citizen's memories of the Nazi occupation. Just how large and effective was the fabled resistance movement? Is cooperation the same thing as collaboration? And how did one's up-close-and-personal experiences with the occupation troops impact one's postwar life? These questions are probingly posed (but not all are answered) by Ophls, who also acts as offscreen interviewer. The first half of the film is a mosaic of sights and sounds from the years 1940-1944: Maurice Chevalier singing for the German troops, clips of propagandistic newsreels, appalling vignettes from the scurrilous anti-Semitic film drama Jew Suss (1940), and the like. Ophls' interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, rationalization" is fully illustrated in the film's long second half, which is devoted almost entirely to interviews, in which the subjects display emotions ranging from mild embarrassment to abrupt rage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

• Side #1 --
  • Chapter Index
• Side #2 --
  • Chapter Index
  • Theatrical Trailer

Side #1 --
1. Part One: The Collapse
2. Two Brothers
3. The Arrival of the Germans
4. A Changing Political Climate
5. The Legion of Companions
6. The Marshall's Visit; Discussing the French & British Navies
7. Race Ideology
8. Franco-German Economic Collaboration
9. The Written Word
10. On Trial for Desertion
11. Work, Family & Nation
12. The French Drama; Anti-Semitic Films
13. The Resistance in Auvergne
14. End Credits
Side #2 --
1. Part Two: The Choice
2. Clermont Remembered
3. Almost Too Nice
4. The Resistance and Allied Forces
5. The Various Levels of French Society
6. The Early Resistance
7. The Black Sheep
8. The Issue of Communism
9. De Gaulle and the Free French
10. The Words of Laval; Anti-Semitism
11. A Visit to Sigmaringen Castle
12. Defeating Bolshevism
13. Different States of Mind
14. The Price of a Wig
15. Judge & Jury
16. End Credits