Le chagrin et la pitié - chronique d'une ville française sous l'occupation

How truly compelling is "The Sorrow and the Pity," a monumental 4 ½-hour documentary about one of the saddest realities of World War II: the almost placid collaboration of the French with their occupying German conquerors. The movie was created by Marcel Ophüls (son of the great Max Ophüls) and portrays a devastating picture of the collective compromise of morality under duress. We are brought into intimate contact with the times by way of newsreel footage and interviews with present-day survivors of all persuasions as they recall the events of the past, corroborate or contradict others or even themselves. We see the danger that comes with historical amnesia and the refusal to see that there is a potential for great evil as well as great good in all of us. This is a profound movie, and a profoundly disquieting one. It does not substitute facile attitudinizing for intelligence and integrity. It demands that we push the limits of our vision beyond the borders of the screen masking in the theatre. It would be a sorrow and a pity not to see it…and think about its implications for all of us.

This is an important documentary because it's an early (1969) look back at Vichy France during World War II, when many of those who lived through the Nazi Germany occupation of France were still alive and were able to speak about their experiences. It's a rather straightforward documentary, blending interviews with archival footage and contemporary scenes from France and Germany.

The French filmmakers took care to interview French, both in support and opposed to the government of France who collaborated with Germany after their swift defeat, as well as Germans, both Nazi and otherwise and British officials who were involved in the war. With three languages present, the dialogue is spoken over in French, although in the English cut that I viewed, the English was mostly left alone.

It's not a stunning film as a documentary, in terms of presentation, but some of the stories that the film brings out of its sources are quite amazing and document a lot of details that a basic study of the WWII era during a history class might not bring out. Even more notably, the individual stories of those involved at the time highlight much of what's going on while also providing an emotional connection to a person or groups of people and making the situations easier to imagine. I think The Sorrow and the Pity remains a valuable film simply because there aren't many of its kind from its era and for how personal it chooses to be in telling the stories of the men and women that lived during this terrible moment in history. But it's really long and people who don't care about history or about people's stories probably would find much in here to like. 8/10.

The Sorrow and the Pity is not only the greatest documentary film ever made, but also one of the greatest films of any kind. A straightforward description of the film seems to promise limitless boredom: more than four hours of talking-head interviews in at least three different languages, blended with old wartime footage and occasional clips from the likes of Maurice Chevalier. But Ophüls' mastery of film technique allows him to create a thinking-person's masterpiece from these seemingly mundane parts. He interviews people who experienced the Occupation (in the late 60s, when the film was being made, many of them were still alive). Some are famous "big names" of history, such as Pierre Mendes-France, imprisoned during the war, Premier of France later in life, and Sir Anthony Eden, a British prime minister in the mid-50s. But even these men are noteworthy more for their actions as "regular" folks than as statesmen, and the true "stars" of the movie are the various "common men" who tell their personal stories. The Grave brothers, for instance, local farmers who fought in the Resistance, are as far as one might get from Jean-Paul Belmondo, but their pleasure with life and their remembrances of friends and foes during the Occupation establish them as real life heroes.

Thirty years down the road, Ophüls' methodology is as interesting as the history he tells. Merely claiming that Ophüls had an argument seems to work against the surface of his film, for he disguises his point of view, his argument, behind the reminiscing of his interview subjects. The film is a classic of humanist culture in large part because Ophüls, in giving the people the chance to say their piece, apparently puts his faith in those people (and in the audience that watches them) to impart "truth." However, the filmmaker is much cannier than this; he is not artless. The editing of the various perspectives in the movie allows the viewer to form conclusions of their own that don't always match those of the people who are doing the talking in the film. In fact, The Sorrow and the Pity makes great demands on the viewer, not just because of the film's length: Ophüls assumes you are processing the information he's providing, and so the film gets better as it progresses, with the viewer's attention being rewarded in direct correlation with the effort you put in.

And Ophüls is himself the primary interviewer in the film; you don't often actually see him, but he's there, asking the questions, leading on his subjects and his audience, only partly hidden (visually and philosophically) from view. The movie might look easy; there are none of the showy flourishes of a Kubrick or Stone here (or of Max Ophüls, for that matter). But the viewer is advised to remember that Ophüls' guiding hand is always in the background, constructing the film's version of the truth just as the characters do in their stories.

This two-part documentary analyzes the occupation of France in World War II through the example of a city with a population of approximately 100,000 people. The spirit of the time is quite well conveyed with the use of archive materials, as well as interviews with members of the resistance movement, collaborators with the occupying forces, and German soldiers who participated in the occupation. Everyone is given the space to express their views and explain the logic that guided them during the war. A side of French history, today mostly hidden, is presented: dark and shameful collaboration, but also the heroic resistance to the occupation - all this in the context of a true civilizational tragedy. The film has been banned in France for more than ten years (it wasn't aired on TV until 1981), supposedly because it was too one-sided, but in fact because it showed the extent of the collaboration and the burden of historical responsibility for the committed crimes - a history that was rushed to be forgotten, in order not to disturb the post-war social consensus and the re-established status quo.

This is a fine documentary. Marcel Ophuls, the interviewer and director, is never too intrusive, never too opinionated - like a Ted Koppel or Jim Lehrer, he doesn't try to censor the views of those he interviews but to ask questions to help elucidate them.

The documentary selects a few dozen people to interview - virtually all with different roles and attitudes during the Occupation. I found particularly interesting:

the French doctor with "7.5 children" (?) who was concerned primarily with feeding his family throughout the Occupation and was thrilled when hunting began after a two year moratorium,

the champion bicyclist who began against great competition in 1943 because of the number of French riding bicycles due to the absence of gas to run their motorbikes or cars (and who said he didn't see many Germans around Clermont-Ferrand in Vichy France)

the extraordinarily gentlemanly and rather shy-seeming Resistance chief who refused to cooperate with the Communists in his ferocious anti-Nazi work,

the British transvestite singer who became a secret agent for the British in occupied France and broke up with his German soldier lover for fear of compromising him,

Anthony Eden's extraordinary tact and intelligence,

Pierre Mendes-France's wonderful restraint, objectivity, humor and

absence of recrimination,

the German father of the bride at a wedding reception whose attitude toward his (undoubtedly brave) service in the War is wholly uncolored by the fact that the country for which he fought was the aggressor, totalitarian, and vigorously persecutor of groups - (I actually suspect that if one were merely a soldier and had not personally acted dishonorably in the War, this is the attitude that most would have -whether a German or Russian soldier - despite extending one's own horrible system into the rest of Europe).

For one, such as myself, who does believe the Communist Party, especially in those days of Stalin, to have been as great a menace to the world as the Nazi Party, the documentary's failure to ever ask the Communist officials interviewed about their beliefs about substituting one horror for another is disappointing. I could not forget as I watched the interviews of Communists, the 14.5 million recently killed by the Russians in Ukraine as the result of the terror famine imposed on that region - or the Great Terror that killed more millions and concluded just as the War began. In fact, M. Ophuls discomfits the Resistance leader who defied Orders from the Free French in London to cooperate with the Communists against the Nazis - I felt like applauding his behavior!

I'm sure for most, the most fascinating character is M. de la Maziere, the extraordinarily candid, intelligent, disarming and charming aristocrat and former Fascist youth who, at the end of the War, volunteered to serve on the Eastern Front in the German Waffen S.S. - from which only 300 of the 5000 survived. He was quite remarkable to hear - he'd obviously spent a great deal of time thinking about what he had done, why, and although regretful, was unsparing in his description of what he knew and what he had done. However, in interviewing him in a German castle used between the Wars by the Kaiser, and in 1944 for Petain and Laval, the documentary makes it appear as if the castle somehow relates to de la Maziere - as if he owned it - when in fact Ophuls simply took him there for the interview. It's the one dishonest seeming moment in this wonderful documentary.

I strongly recommmend that others see it - you will wonder how you would react, and think about what those in your own country would react to foreign occupation.