The Sorrow and the Pity

Name: The Sorrow and the Pity
Genre: Documentary, War, History
Released: 1971-03-15
Duration: 251 min
Cast: Alexis Grave, Helmut Tausend, Louis Grave, Marcel Verdier, Pierre Mendès France

Chronicle of a French city under the Occupation

Rating

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Release Date

3/15/1971

Runtime

251 mins

Genres

Documentary War History

Overview

From 1940 to 1944, France's Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany. Marcel Ophüls mixes archival footage with 1969 interviews of a German officer and of collaborators and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature, details and reasons for the collaboration, from anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fear of Bolsheviks, to simple caution.

Status

Released

Original Language

French

Budget

Revenue

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How It Feels

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A searching four-hour excavation of how ordinary people rationalized complicity during the Nazi occupation, built from archival traces and surprisingly candid testimony from those who lived it. Watching feels like eavesdropping on a difficult reckoning that rarely happened publicly.