The Sorrow and the 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 1: "The Collapse"

Jewish film entrepreneur Bernard Natan on trial in France for fraud c. 1936; screenshot from part 1, The Collapse

Part one of the film focuses on France's defeat by Germany in 1940, the initial support for armistice and the Pétain 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 film Jud Suss in France (scenes of which are shown). Also included is an extended interview with French Jewish politician and officer Pierre 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 SS Le Masilia, together with Pierre Viénot, Jean Zay, and Alex Wiltzer, as they attempted to rejoin their military unit which had moved to Morocco. He eventually escaped from jail to join Charles de Gaulle's forces operating out of England, and later served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955.

Interviews were conducted by Ophuls, André Harris or George Bidault, with:[1]

Archival footage is interwoven through the film, featuring historical figures including:

Initially commissioned by French government-owned television to create a two part made for TV documentary,[5] 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."[5] This film was first shown on French television in 1981[6] after being banned[9] 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 was Simone 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.[10]

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 by Ian Christie.[11]

The candid approach of The Sorrow and the Pity shone a spotlight on antisemitism in France and disputed the idealized collective memory of the nation at large.[12][13] In 2001, Richard Trank, a documentarian of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, described it as "a film about morality that explores the role of ordinary people".[9]

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][14]

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."[15] Critic Roger 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 the Los Angeles Times in 2000, US film critic Kenneth Turan called it a "monumental" work, and "one of the most potent documentaries ever made".[16] The Arts Desk (UK) called it simply "the greatest documentary ever made about France during the Second World War".[11]

In France, the film won the Grand Prize of the Dinard Festival.[5]

In the United States, the film was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971 for Best Documentary Feature.[17][18][19] In the same year, it received a special award by the National Society of Film Critics,[20] "which called it 'a film of extraordinary public interest and distinction'."[9] In 1972, it was named Best Foreign Language Film by the U.S. National Board of Review.[21]

In the UK, it won the 1972 BAFTA award for Best Foreign TV Programme.[22]

Woody Allen's film Annie Hall (1977) references The Sorrow and the Pity as a plot device. Film critic Donald Liebenson explains: "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'."[9][23]

• Collaborationism
• German occupation of France in World War II
• The Holocaust in France

Wikimedia Commons has media related to French resistance.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nazi collaborators in France.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to German occupation in France.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vichy government (1940-1944).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Holocaust.

• Director Marcel Ophuls in Conversation with Thom Powers, Published on Oct 8, 2015, Retrieved November 3, 2018 – via YouTube.
• Sorrow and the Pity, Retrieved November 3, 2018 – via UniFrance.
• Roger and Ebert review, Published on September 19, 1972, Retrieved November 4, 2018.
• The Sorrow and the Pity at IMDb
• The Sorrow and the Pity at Rotten Tomatoes
• (in French and English) Testimony File - History of the resistance of the Strasbourg French University transferred to Clermont-Ferrand