The Sorrow and the Pity

Amazon.com essential video

Often hailed as one of the greatest documentaries of all time, The Sorrow and the Pity is still astonishing long after its original release in Paris. The lengthy film (anyone who has heard it prominently referred to in Woody Allen's Annie Hall knows it's four hours long) tells the story of France under Nazi occupation by weaving together a number of interviews as well as newsreel clips and propaganda films shot by the Nazis. Director Marcel Ophüls skillfully utilizes interviews with people who often contradict each other, so the story of France not only occupied but divided against itself emerges fully. Filmed in the late 1960s, when bitter memories still resonated, the interviews conducted by Ophüls have great depth and are often amazing. Ordinary Frenchmen who found themselves performing heroic acts for the Resistance recall the dangers they faced while those who collaborated with the Nazis make excuses. A former Nazi officer interviewed at a wedding party in Germany pompously puts a benign face on what occurred where he was stationed; interviews with French residents utterly refute his sanitized version of the past. Beyond the interviews, the arresting archival footage chosen by Ophüls is remarkable, such as an unsettling clip of a stand-up comedian performing before a laughing audience whose collar insignias identify them as members of the fanatical Nazi SS. The Sorrow and the Pity lives up to its reputation as being a magnificent documentary. --Robert J. McNamara

Description

A chronicle of a French city under the occupation. Director Marcel Ophuls combined interviews and archival film footage to explore the reality of the French occupation in one small industrial city, Clermont-Ferrand. He spoke with resistance fighters, collaborators, spies, farmers, government officials, writers, artists and veterans. The result is a shattering portrait of how ordinary people actually conducted themselves under extraordinary circumstances. By turns gripping, horrifying, and inspiring, Academy Award nominee "The Sorrow and the Pity" is a triumph of humanist filmmaking and a testament to the power of cinema. Before "Shoah," "Schindler's List," "The Long Way Home" and "The Last Days," there was "The Sorrow and the Pity."

Customer Reviews:

The Sorrow and the Pity.......2007-07-06

A milestone of documentary film-making, "Sorrow" captures this devastating period in France's history in painfully frank, unblinking terms, and provides no easy answers, just as there were none at the time. The French people had no choice but to adapt to this oppressive new social order, since rebellion or escape was a life-or-death proposition. So, were the collaborators as guilty as the occupiers? And were those that rebelled really that heroic, if it meant their families would also suffer for their death and betrayal of the occupying forces? Watch this unnerving masterpiece, and reach your own conclusions.

Watch, Listen, Learn, and Think.......2007-03-22

Like many other Americans, I had a skewed view of French participation in WWII. I mean, the prevailing wisdom is that they fought (badly) a short time, surrendered ignominiously, and then wanted a huge chunk of the glory and German territory to occupy after the English and the Americans saved them from the Nazis. But after watching The Sorrow and The Pity, I came away with a different view.
On the eve of WWII, France was a country beset by weak political leadership and growing tensions between left and right. The Socialist government of Leon Blum was widely reviled and after its collapse the country drifted from one domestic crisis to another as war clouds gathered ominously to the east. On paper, France was well-prepared for war with the numerically fewer and militarily less advanced German army. The German high command did not think the war would be easy and many doubted that France could be beaten. But it was. As it turned out, German ideology, discipline, and training trumped French overconfidence and disunity.
The Sorrow and the Pity shows the tragedy of defeat and the disarray into which France fell in its aftermath. WWI hero Petain took command in the part of France the Germans did not occupy and made Vichy its capital. He made many errors, but in retrospect you have to say he tried to keep the Germans at bay as much as possible. Think how the war may have turned out had the Germans occupied the country entirely!
In a series of interviews interspersed with period film footage we see the occupation through the eyes of both the occupier and the occupied. We hear stories of bravery and cowardice, tragedy and triumph, loyalty and treachery. Deep thinkers might be left musing about what might have happened in their own countries under similar circumstances. Importantly, we get two views of Laval and Petain instead of just the usual dismissal of them both as traitors.
The Sorrow and the Pity should give all of us pause. Watch, listen, learn and think about what your own reactions might be if your country were occupied. Would you use occupation as a cover to settle personal vendettas? Would you keep your head down and try to go about your business unobtrusively? Would you passively resist? Or would you actively work for liberation? We all might imagine ourselves as doing the most heroic thing, but what would we really do? And would you rationalize whatever it was you ended up doing after it was all over? Millions of Germans and Frenchmen did!
I really recommend that anyone interested in obtaining a well-rounded view of WWII and the French role in it take the 4 hours+ and see The Sorrow and the Pity. Not only does the viewer learn a lot about that aspect of the war, but also about human nature. This is truly a gripping story from start to finish.

The proper way to make a documentary...........2006-05-09

This is the way a great documentary is supposed to be made. This film came at a time when documentaries were few and far between, it remains riveting for every minute of its 251 minute length. It succeeds by telling a coherent story as well as an enthralling one. Most documentaries these days throw everything at you (in a hasty, sloppy manner), and load up their films with endless "talking head" shots. Then when they're criticised for it, they come up with the usual adage "it's up to the viewer to decide.". While the ultimate judge is the viewer, this is not a reason for a "cut and paste" approach to the film. This approach removes the narrative flow from many recent documentaries. This film tells its story so well and brilliantly, like a grand novel, and illuminates you on the Vichy government, and how it was really like to live and how complicated it is to live under an occupation. There are some historians here and there, but the film deals mainly with those who lived and fought the Nazis, those with the most at stake. That's one of the reasons the film is so riveting. It comes across as human, something many documetaries miss entirely. It's a great film. Its length means nothing, because you're never bored. A must...

Stellar History........2006-03-18

Never in my life have I seen a film dedicated to the subject of Vichy France. I had long read about it but knew very little about the official pronouncements of the collaborationist government. I assumed that The Sorrow and the Pity was strictly a documentary about the French resistance, but was pleasantly surprised by its depth. It describes the Vichy of Petain and Laval quite thoroughly. You may recognize some of Ophuls' interviewees from The World at War (such as Edward Spears), but the stand out individual here was the fellow who volunteered for the SS. I assume he served in the Charlemagne outfit. Frankly, I was surprised he was alive and actually showing his face. His point that the slaughter of 1,600 French sailors by the English was a motivating force for him to join the Germans was something I would have never considered. It seems inconceivable back then for the French to have even hesitated siding with anybody other than England--given the competition--but it is clear that Anglophobia was rampant after "the rout" of May 1940. The most sensational thing about this film is the footage of the collaborationists. It seems as if modern history has made great attempts to cover up just how much the citizenry backed Petain (at first) and looked sympathetically to the Nazis. The speeches, the newsreels, and the photos are incredibly valuable and terribly interesting- especially if you're a history buff. I'd rank this one right up there with Hotel Terminus.

Insightful and penetrating.......2006-02-27

Let me say immediately that this movie requires some upfront investment: patience, attention, and sympathy. It's not easy to sit for four hours and view "news" that's sixty years old. But once you get past the initial impediments, what you get is a clear window into events that are themselves clear windows into human motivations and their consequences. Ophuls examines one city, and examines how collaborators and resistance fighters played lethal chess. He interviews and probes. What emerges after the four hours is a weird sensation that you were actually present at the interviews--you WERE the camera--and that's the highest praise anyone can give to a documentary.
Incidentally, one bonus of watching this is that you get vivid context for many other French movies that take place during this dramatic period of history, e.g., "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Le Dernier Metro."

The Sorrow and the Pity - 2 DVD Special Edition [NON-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]

Average customer rating:

The Sorrow and the Pity - 2 DVD Special Edition [NON-US Format, PAL, Region 2, Import]
Director: Marcel Ophuls
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Special Editions | Fully Loaded DVDs | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000NDOX3E

Product Description

Made for French television, Marcel Ophuls's magnificent four-hour-plus documentary explores the average French citizen's 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. The first half of the film 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), and the like. Ophuls' interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, rationalization" is fully illustrated in the film's long second half, which is devoted almost entirely to interviews, in which the subjects display emotions ranging from mild embarrassment to abrupt rage. Long, challenging, exhausting, but never dull.

DVD:

DVD

DVD