The Sorrow and the Pity/Le chagrin et la pitie by Marcel Ophuls (1969)

From 1940 to 1944, France's Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany. Marcel Ophuls's brilliant two part documentary combines interviews from 1969 with archival footage to explore 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 Ophuls, who also acts as offscreen interviewer.

Part one, "The Collapse," 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), as well as an extended interview with Pierre Mendes-France, jailed for anti-Vichy action and later France's prime minister.

Part two, "The Choice," is devoted almost entirely to interviews, the heart of which is a discussion with Christian de la Maziere, one of 7000 French youth to fight on the eastern front wearing German uniforms. The film's second half illustrates Ophuls' interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, [and] rationalization."

The film shows the French people's response to the occupation as heroic, pitiable and monstrous, sometimes all at once. The Sorrow and the Pity is long, challenging and exhausting, but never dull.

THE SORROW AND THE PITY
Chronicle of a French City under the Occupation

"A great human document, an unforgettable experience."
"An artistic and intellectual triumph."
"A magnificent documentary epic."

Also included in the torrent:
- The theatrical trailer
- A scan of the DVD case

IMDb - 8.3