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Customer Reviews of The Sorrow and the Pity

Marcel Ophuls, son of Max Ophuls has created a poignant potrait of french society under the Nazis occupation, and their relation to the most horible crime in human history -- he indeed is not afraid to tell the truth; that holocaust took place in France because the French citizen allowed it to happen to the least to say, and even have colaborated to it. However, this film is not a simple minded accusation, but a thoughtful study about a society under pressure, and its strugle for survival.

It certainly is a deppressing film; the viewers are constantl reminded to what they would have done if they were --we were-- living under such sircumstances. It is truthful to that extreme extent. It's an amazing film; thoughtful, inteligent, emotional.

The opening of this film steered quite a controversy in Frannce, but neverthless had led the way to fictional films about the Holocaust and the ocupation that are more mature and adult, not afraid to portray the truth; Jean-Pierre Melville's THE ARMY OF SHADOW, Francois Truffaut's THE LAST METRO, among others.

France under Nazi occupation and the lessons of appeasement.
After the terrorist attacks on American soil of September 11th 2001, the question of how do we as a nation respond to enormous evil, is no longer hypothetical, or avoidable. There are important lessons to be learned from Marcel Ophuls 1969 documentary masterpiece, The Sorrow and the Pity, Chronicle of a French City Under the Occupation. This film, combining archival footage with firsthand accounts of the occupation, gleaned from interviews conducted 25 years after the end of World War II, and punctuated ironically with the singing of Maurice Chevalier, provides us an essential perspective on that shameful period in French history. Ultimately this is a cautionary tale about the moral price of a nation's appeasement. This DVD contains the restored version of the film, which is apparently 251 minutes, not 260 minutes as stated in some movie guides. The DVD unfortunately, has no extras, not even alternate audio tracks in English or other languages. And the English subtitles are on the film, when they should have been a menu option, along with other languages. I presume this failure to fully take advantage of the possibilities available in the DVD format, was the decision of Woody Allen, who presents this restoration of The Sorrow and the Pity.

Scalding Remembrance of French Betrayal
I was a little daunted at watching "The Sorrow and the Pity" because it is four hours long, and in "Annie Hall" Woody Allen presents this movie as a sort of dour duty that you have to sit through to prove your own ethical hardiness. It turns out that this landmark documentary is as gripping and riveting as any fine fictional film, because it handles its thorny issues with great skill and is as carefully crafted and filmed as a Hollywood thriller. I wonder how much Ken Burns was influenced by it, because it seems to be a sort of forerunner of his work; that is, documentaries that are planned and executed as art, not just as reguritation of stale facts.

Ophuls talks to many French and Germans who lived during the time, and who either resisted the Nazis or gave into them. (It's a little aggravating that on the DVD there are no titles to identify who is speaking; you have to piece together who said what from a close reading of the closing credits.) People were more innocent 30 years ago about appearing before a camera and they maybe weren't as aware of just how revealing about themselves it could be. Thus you get interview subjects like Laval's nephew, and the former German officer at his child's wedding, and the aristocrat who joined the Waffen SS, who inadvertently disclose their opportunism or self-deception or venality or cowardice. The clips from now rarely seen propaganda films that Ophuls uses are mesmerizing. During the scenes from the anti-Semitic "Jud Suss" you get a feeling of palpable evil as you view just how the Nazis prepared their subjects for the coming holocaust.

Ophuls prsents Vichy as a colossal moral failure by the French people, a collapse of character that haunts them to this very day. (Ophuls couldn't get French financing for the film, and then state-run French television refused to show it.) He shatters forever the myth that all the French were in the Resistance. "Sorrow" and "pity" are the very words one uses to define "tragedy"; "tragedy" is the word you must use to describe the French experience of World War II. This film is a solemn reminder of the dangers of appeasing or collaborating with fascism, and it's more relevant than ever.