The Sorrow and the Pity [Le Chagrin et La Pitié] ***** (1969, Pierre Mendès-France, Christian de la Mazière) – Classic Movie Review 4500

Co-writer/ director Marcel Ophuls’s celebrated 1969 documentary film is an overwhelming experience both emotionally and intellectually.

It investigates with masterly command and the utmost integrity France under the Nazi Occupation through a shrewd blend of new 1969 interviews, including with a German officer, collaborators and resistance fighters, and archive footage of wartime contemporary newsreels.

Running an epic 251 minutes, it is masterfully made with the greatest and most scrupulous care, imagination, sorrow and pity by director Ophuls.

Part One The Collapse has an extended interview with Pierre Mendès-France, jailed for anti-Vichy actions and later French Prime Minister. Part Two The Choice has an extended interview with Christian de la Mazière, one of 7,000 French young men who fought in German uniforms on the Eastern front.

André Harris is Ophuls’s co-writer, and André Gazut and Jürgen Thieme are the photographers.

On a trivial note, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton wait in line to see this 251-minute film in Annie Hall but Allen refuses to go in to the cinema because they are two minutes late.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4500

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