Rating: 
Summary: Courageous, controversial and truthful
Review: To most film viewers, this masterpiece of Marcel Ophuls is known by being continuously mentioned by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall". Yes, it is the long documentary film about the holocaust that they talk about.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.
Rating:
Summary: Courageous, controversial and truthful
Review: To most film viewers, this masterpiece of Marcel Ophuls is known by being continuously mentioned by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall". Yes, it is the long documentary film about the holocaust that they talk about. 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.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest Documentary Ever per IMDB
Review: While I had dreaded watching because of the 4+ hour sitting time, actually I found The Sorrow and the Pity to go by quite quickly. The Image Entertainment DVD, like the film, is divided into two parts each just over two hours long. You can easily watch one part in the morning and a second in the afternoon. The film shows WWII in France thru the lives of the regular people it affected, a style which probably influenced the makers of the Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds a few years later. Like most documentaries, the director certainly seems to take sides in this story: he appears to be exposing the "collaborators". But given that, I still feel he gave a balanced presentation of events.
A few provocative thoughts came to mind whilst watching this film. Ophuls paints an air of shame over the collaborators, but he provides no insight into why they chose not to fight. I would suggest two factors that caused such widespread support amongst the French for Petain and non-violence. The first was the utter moral depravity of the Great War, fought just over 25 years prior. In that war, from a population of 40 million, the French suffered over 1 million dead, 4 million wounded (1.5 million of those permanently maimed); about a 75% casualty rate, all in a war which their leaders promised would "be over before Christmas" (it lasted over four full years and destroyed much of the nation's infrastructure as well). If you need some background on this, I strongly suggest you watch Stanley Kubrick's great film "Paths of Glory" (1957). Petain was a hero of the Great War and knew firsthand the costs associated with fighting Germany again. Secondly, there was a great malaise amongst the people in 1930s France related to the depression and corruption. A quick survey of l'Age d'Or 1930s French cinema taps into this right away. Check out Marcel Carne's "Port of Shadows" (1938) or Jean Renoir's "Rules of the Game" (actually banned by the 3rd Republic in 1939). Given this background, why would the French want to go to war again to defend a corrupt government which had them mired in poverty? Petain offered Frenchmen an option that did not lead to the immediate destruction of their nation, even if it meant some indignities in the short term. After all, wasn't their entrance into the EU a very similar venture? Does the Euro (run from the German Bundesbank) make them less French? Less patriotic?
In Ophuls defense, he does a fair job of showing the roots of the "resistance": many of them were vandals and brutes, and almost all of them were communists. French resistance fighters dropped bombs on their own country to aid the English. During the early years of the occupation, German soldiers were shown to be orderly and respectful to the local population. And once the resistance had "liberated" France (after destroying much of it), it found time to murder thousands of people (some of them actually guilty of what they were accused of), and punish and torture many thousands more. All in all, Le Chagrin et la Pitie was a very provocative film, and an invaluable addition to the historic record of a war which marked the height of the Calamity of 20th Century. Highly recommended.
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