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| The Sorrow and the Pity | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster | |
| French | Le Chagrin et la Pitié |
| Directed by | Marcel Ophuls |
| Written by |
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| Produced by |
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| Cinematography |
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| Edited by | Claude Vajda |
Production companies | |
Release date |
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Running time | 251 minutes |
| Countries | France West Germany Switzerland |
| Languages | French German English[1][2] |
| Box office | $13,082[3][4] |
The Sorrow and the Pity (French:Le Chagrin et la Pitié) is a two-part 1969documentary film byMarcel Ophuls about thecollaboration between theVichy government andNazi Germany duringWorld War II. The film uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters fromClermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration, includingantisemitism,Anglophobia, fear ofBolsheviks andSoviet invasion, and the desire for power.
The title comes from a comment by interviewee Marcel Verdier, a pharmacist inMontferrat, Isère, who says "the two emotions I experienced the most [during the Nazi occupation] were sorrow and pity".
The film examines the responses of the French people to German occupation and their reasons for tending toward resistance or collaboration, focusing on the Auvergne region and the city of Clermont-Ferrand. Events are presented in roughly chronological order, with interviewees appearing throughout both parts of the film.Maurice Chevalier's "Sweepin' the Clouds Away" is used repeatedly during the film. Chevalier was a popular entertainer with the German occupation force and was accused of collaboration even while he claimed to have offered support to the resistance, mirroring the complexities of French reactions to occupation highlighted in the film.
Part one of the film focuses on France's defeat by Germany in 1940, the initial support for armistice and thePétain government, the beginning of German occupation, and the early stirrings of resistance. Various explanations for France's defeat, capitulation, and acceptance of the Vichy government are offered, with differing opinions depending on the political leanings and class status of the interviewees. Particular attention is given to the German and Vichy use of antisemitism, including discussion of the distribution of the German propaganda filmJud Suss in France (scenes of which are shown). Also included is an extended interview with French Jewish politician and officerPierre Mendès France about his trial and imprisonment by the Vichy government and later escape. Mendès France was arrested on trumped-up charges of desertion after leaving France on the SSLe Masilia, together withPierre Viénot,Jean Zay, andAlex Wiltzer [fr], as they attempted to rejoin their military unit which had moved to Morocco. He eventually escaped from jail to joinCharles de Gaulle's forces operating out of England, and later served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955.
Part two focuses on the movement of different factions in France toward more open resistance against or collaboration with the Germans. Partisan actions and underground networks are discussed, as well as increased cooperation with German authorities by the Vichy government under the French prime ministerPierre Laval. Special attention is paid to thedenaturalization and deportation of French Jews under Vichy. This part features a long interview withChristian de La Mazière, one of 7,000 French youth to fight on theEastern Front wearingGerman uniforms. As de La Mazière explains how his conservative upbringing and fear of communism led to his embrace of Fascism, Ophuls overlays audio of Hitler speaking. Meanwhile, a guide points out items connected to theHohenzollern royal family as he leads a tour throughSigmaringen Castle where the Vichy government was briefly based near the end of the war.
The last segment of part two details the liberation of France and the legacy of resistants and collaborators in France. Footage of French women who associated with German soldiers having their heads shaved is shown, and an interviewee describes how she was accused of denouncing resistance members and then tortured by alleged members before standing trial.
Interviews were conducted by Ophuls, André Harris or George Bidault, with:[1]
Archival footage is interwoven through the film, featuring historical figures including:
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Initially commissioned by French government-owned television to create a two part made for TV documentary,[5][when?] the film was banned after Ophuls submitted it to the studio that hired him.[6]
Ophuls shot his film over a two-year period, gathering about 50 hours of potentially usable material to edit.[7] The title is drawn from a scene in which a young woman asks her grandfather, a pharmacist, what he felt during the Occupation, and the somber answer is just two stark emotions.[8]
The film had its world premiere in Germany in 1973.[5][when?] It was finally shown in France in 1971, being initially released in a theatre inRive Gauche in Paris as a16 mm film where it was a hit before being blown up to a35 mm print for showing at the Paramount Elysees on theChamps-Élysées.[9] The film was shown on French television in 1981[6] after being banned[10] from that medium for years. In 1969, after the director submitted the film to the studio that hired him, the network head "told a government committee that the film 'destroys myths that the people of France still need'".[6] Frederick Busi suggests that this was because of how uncomfortable it is to face the reality of collaborationism. Writing of French conservative establishment groups' reactions to the film, "They, too, preferred that little be said about their role, and in some ways this reluctance is more significant than that of the extremists, since they represent so large a segment of society and mainly dominate contemporary politics."[5] It is frequently assumed that the reason was French reluctance to admit the facts of French history. While this may have been a factor, the principal mover in the decision wasSimone Veil, a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz who became a minister and the first president of the European Parliament, on the grounds that the film presented too one-sided a view.[11][clarification needed]
The first DVD release of the film in France came in November 2011.[8] In the UK, home media releases include a 2017 DVD and Blu-Ray from Arrow Academy which, among its extra content, features a lengthy 2004 interview with Ophuls byIan Christie.[12]
The candid approach ofThe Sorrow and the Pity shone a spotlight on antisemitism in France and disputed the idealizedcollective memory of the nation at large.[13][14] In 2001, Richard Trank, a documentarian of theSimon Wiesenthal Center, described it as "a film about morality that explores the role of ordinary people".[10]
In France, after its release, communists, socialists, and "independent groups" treated the film favorably; however, the far right disapproved on account of the director's background.[5] Some French critics denounced the film as unpatriotic.[6] The film has also been criticized for being too selective and that the director was "too close to the events portrayed to provide an objective study of the period."[5][15]
In the United States,Time magazine gave a positive review of the film, and wrote that Marcel Ophuls "tries to puncture the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans."[16] CriticRoger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, and praised the depth and complexity of its human portraiture, which somehow still manages to avoid any abstraction of collaboration.[7]
Retrospectively, critical appraisals have become ever more lavish. Writing in theLos Angeles Times in 2000, US film criticKenneth Turan called it a "monumental" work, and "one of the most potent documentaries ever made".[17]The Arts Desk (UK) called it simply "the greatest documentary ever made about France during the Second World War".[12]
In France, the film won the Grand Prize of theDinard Festival [fr].[5][when?]
In the United States, the film was nominated for anAcademy Award in 1971 forBest Documentary Feature.[18][19][20] In the same year, it received a special award by theNational Society of Film Critics,[21] "which called it 'a film of extraordinary public interest and distinction'."[10] In 1972, it was namedBest Foreign Language Film by the U.S.National Board of Review.[22]
In the UK, it won the 1972BAFTA award for Best Foreign TV Programme.[23]
The film is referenced as aplot device inWoody Allen's 1977 filmAnnie Hall. Film critic Donald Liebenson writes: "In one of the film's signature scenes, Alvy Singer (Allen) suggests he and Annie (Diane Keaton) go see the film. 'I'm not in the mood to see a four-hour documentary on Nazis,' Annie protests. In the film's poignant conclusion, Alvy runs into Annie as she is taking a date to see the film, which Alvy counts as 'a personal triumph'."[10][24]
Win Special Award - 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Best Foreign Film - 1972 National Board of Review Nomination Best Documentary Feature - 1971 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
