1 ENTERTAINMENT 6 FREE BAGELS NOW AT ALL LOCATIONS! 7 DAYS A WEEK! Klaus Barbie Documentary Began As Magazine Series BAGEL! D BAGEL! BUY ONE DOZEN GET 1/2 DOZEN FREE MORRIE WARSHAWSKI Special to The Jewish News DETROIT BAGEL FACTORIES I Main Office: 641-9188 VAkRA VAZz. RESTAURANTS 44 C. ? & LOUNGE .. 1.= 1 ' — Fine Northern Italian and Continental Cuisine s 1st ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION March bth thru March 11th ILitirhw 25% OFF ALL DINNERS Sewing Business Lunches Mindays thru Fridays HAPPY HOUR - Mon: Fri. 4-7 p.m. Y2 OFF All Drinks in Lounge Private Banquet Room Available For 25 to 100 People Entertainment Nightly 645 E. Big Beaver DINING HOURS Mon.-Thuis. 11 am-10 pm Fri. 11 am-10:30 pm Sat. 5 pm-10:30 pm Closed Sunday 1 Block West of Rochester 689-6920 Ana 's I OPEN 7 DAYS Family Dining I 27167 GREENFIELD, Just North of 11 Mile 559-8222 DINNER TWO-FOR-ONE OVER 18 ENTREES SERVED ANY HOUR American and Lebanese Cuisine • Daily Specials 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. EARLY BIRD DINNER SPECIALS (Except 2 For 1 & Early Bird Specials) 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. 10% OFF ANY AGE! Fine Italian Cuisine Detroit's Premier p Supper Club - ON JEFFERSON Also Available For All Festive Occasions • Indoor Valet Parking • Music! • Elegance! 111 7909 East Jefferson at Van Dyke 331-5450 70 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1989 n 1983 when Marcel Ophuls began his re- search on the trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie ("The Butcher of Lyons") he had in mind only a short series of articles for The Na- tion. Five years, $1.6 million, hundreds of interviews and thousands of miles later he gave birth to a 4V2 hour magnum opus of documen- tary filmmaking — Hotel Ter- minus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie. The film has garnered critical praise international- ly for Ophuls, who is best known for his classic work The Sorrow and the Pity — an exploration of collaboration and resistance in German- occupied Clermont-Ferrand in France. Hotel Terminus is an unrelenting examination of Klaus Barbie's background as a child, his activities during World War II, his life as an American undercover opera- tive and then South Ameri- can businessman after the war, and his subsequent trial for war crimes in France. "I only got into this kind of filmmaking and this topic by accident. It was just a series of assignments and I tried to cope with them the best I can," explained - Ophuls recently in a phone conversa- tion from his home in Neuil- ly, France. Ophuls displays an ex- cellent command of English colored by the two other languages he speaks fluently -- German and French. This should come as no surprise given his background. Ophuls was born in Frankfurt in 1927 of a Jewish father (the film director Max Ophuls who created Lola Montes) and Catholic mother. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1938, and then was raised in Hollywood when his fami- ly moved to escape Nazi persecution during the French Occupation. Ophuls culled heavily from his own childhood when choosing the music for Hotel Terminus. He suffused the film with curiously up-tempo songs by the Vienna Boys Choir. "These are songs I sang in my childhood, Ger- man folk songs. My own father comes from the same background and even the same region as Barbie's fami- ly!" Ophuls' fascination with 4 Some have compared Marcel Ophuls' Hotel Terminus film to a detective novel. the music lay in the tension between the purity and in- nocence of the children's voices in contrast to the sophisticated and upbeat militarism of the times. Music is only one of many elements that help make this documentary entertaining in a way that will surprise viewers expecting a more ponderous or serious ex- amination of a Nazi war criminal. Ophuls has much to say about this aspect of the film, which some have com- pared to a "detective novel." "It was only very late on that I realized the entertain- ment aspect of the film was not sacrilegious at all, and was probably what would bring and keep the film alive . . . I don't adhere to this business of self-righteousness in documentaries. It's a form of filmmaking that very easi- ly falls into propaganda and therefore into self- aggrandizement. That's one of the reasons black comedy is used in this film." As he puts it, "The per- sonally comic interventions usually come out of frustra- tion and anger, and there's plenty to be angry about in this film. Even I don't get off the hook. As the interviewer I am quite consciously in- trusive, pushy, angry, sometimes cruel, sometimes possibly petty minded, but not self-indulgent and not ex- hibitionistic." Religion plays a minor role in Ophuls life but he still con- siders himself a Jewish film- maker, "in the sense of living in a century where I and my fmaily have been involved in Jewish destiny by birth." Ophuls admits to no clear position on the pursuit and trial of Nazi war criminals who remain at large. "What I am convinced about is that once Barbie was brought back to France then there was a moral duty for the trial to take place. But should all Nazi war criminals be dealt with in that way, I don't know. What I have convictions on is not forgetting, which isn't the same thing since trials are not always the best way of remembering?' Barbie's trial occupies the last portion of the film. Ophuls calls the event "shat- tering" and "moving." Although Ophuls gained ac- cess to scores of people for in- terviews, he never managed to meet Barbie and question him directly. What would Ophuls have asked Barbie? "What I would have asked him is 'How do you become a monster?' I have this theory that in the case of Barbie he probably wouldn't know hoW to answer because when you take that amount of guilt on you — such a staggering amount of guilt — something must happen to your psyche which completely blocks whatever the origins are of how you got into it." One of his great frustra tions with the distribution and marketing of Hotel Ter- minus has been the indif- ference of the Jewish com- munity. "Our problem now is to overcome the reluctance people have, paradoxically and particularly in Jewish communities, to see another documentary about Nazis and Jews." The entire experience of making Hotel Terminus has left Ophuls a more sober man. "What I have become more pessimistic about is how peo- ple adjust to evil. The ease with which people adapt to it 4