JOE AMER'S

France was the only country to have ...
voted laws which were even more racist
than the Nuremberg Laws, as the French
racist criteria were even more demand-
ing than the German racist criteria."
The film exposes French anti-
semitism, overt and latent, with stark
and surprising footage. Although not
primarily a documentary of the
Holocaust, The Sorrow and the Pity
unearths disturbing truths about
France's role in Hitler's "Final Solution."
The focus of the documentary is, in
particular, on the city of Clermont-
Ferrand, selected because of its geograph-
ical proximity to Vichy, which was the
capital of the "free" zone. The region also
was a noted base of the Maquis — the
guerilla army of the French Resistance —
and home to the Michelin factory, an
important character in its own right.

players in the struggle against Hitler's
forces. But along with Resistance
fighters, he also interviews Nazi and
Nazi sympathizers, such as Dr. Paul
Schmidt, the former chief interpreter
for Hitler (1934-44).
What emerges is a complicated and
often contradictory oral history of the
period. But, because it is an oral histo-
ry, it provides a striking counterpart to
the ideas and understandings we may
already have about the war. It also gives
us a type of information — remarkable
information — that doesn't often
become part of the written record.
For example, as one subject
describes the initial invasion of France,
he recalls certain women of Paris' bour-
geoisie who — aiming to inspire the

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SORROW on page 85

:•A

Left to right:

Marcel Ophuls:
A German Jew
by birth, the director
of "The Sorrow and
the Pity" fled Hitler
with his family in
1933 and became
a French citizen
before escaping
to America.

The chronicle develops in a long
series of interviews with men on all
sides of the conflict (women's voices
are rare in the film). Shopkeepers,
journalists, heads of state, theater
owner, teachers, hotel owners and the
like recall with candor their experi-
ences during the occupation.
From Pierre Mendes-France, the
former prime minister of France, to
Raphael Geminiani, a champion pro-
fessional bicyclist, Ophuls elicits
observations from major and minor

with owners who had gone bankrupt.
Even after he finally secured permis-
sion last year, he had another problem:
Getting the word out beyond the for-
eign-film-art-house crowd. A sudden
idea helped him gain publicity.
Doros remembered that Woody
Allen, a longtime fan and supporter
of Ophuls, had paid tribute to the
film in Annie Hall. In one scene,
Allen's character, Alvy, drags Annie to
see the movie, despite her complaint
that she is "not in the mood to see a
four-hour documentary on Nazis."

Marcel Verd ier
and son, pharmacists
in Clermont-Ferrand:
As her father is interviewed,
Marcel's daughter, not pictured,
is the face of apathy.

Former French Prime Minister
Pierre Mendes-France is among
those interviewed in
"The Sorrow and the Pity"

Alexis and Louis Grave,
farmers in Yronde, a hamlet near
Clermont-Ferrand: The chronicle
develops in a long series o f interviews
with men on all sides of the conflict.

~

By the end of Annie Hall, Annie
drags her new boyfriend to see the
film, which Alvy considers a person-
al triumph.
So it was not surprising that
Allen promptly agreed, after a call
from Doros, to sign on as a presen-
ter of the re-release. The Sorrow and
the Pity was "such non-junk in a sea
of mediocrity," he told the New York
Times. "It's to the documentary
what tragedy is to drama." El

— Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

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