Happy 93rd Birthday, Marcel Ophüls! Born today in 1927 as Hans Marcel Oppenheimer, this German former actor, writer and filmmaker is a central figure of the documentary genre.
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany, Ophuls was the son of the German-born writer and film director Max Ophüls ('Letter from an Unknown Woman', 'The Reckless Moment', 'The Earrings of Madame De...', 'Lola Montès').
In 1933, Ophüls' family left Germany following the coming to power of the Nazi Party and settled in Paris, France. In 1938, he became a naturalized citizen.
Following the invasion of France by Germany in May 1940, they were forced to flee to the Vichy zone, remaining in hiding for over a year before crossing the Pyrenees into Spain in order to travel to the United States, arriving there in December 1941.
Sometime later, Marcel attended Hollywood High School, then Occidental College, Los Angeles, California.
Afterwards, he spent a brief period serving in a U.S. Army theatrical unit in Japan in 1946, then studied at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1950, he also became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
When the family returned to Paris that same year, Marcel became an assistant to French film director Julien Duvivier ('Pépé le Moko') and Ukrainian-born, Lithuanian-American filmmaker Anatole Litvak ('The Snake Pit').
He also worked with John Huston's 1952 British Technicolor musical/drama film 'Moulin Rouge'.
Three years later, Ophüls appeared as an uncredited actor in his father's 1955 French Eastmancolor biography drama/romance film 'Lola Montès'.
Through François Truffaut, Ophüls got to direct and episode of the 1962 French/Italian/Japanese/Polish/West German black and white drama/romance film 'L'amour à vingt ans' ('Love at Twenty').
The film unites five directors from around the world to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of twenty.
Aside from Ophüls and Truffaut, another notable co-director was Polish film and theatre director Andrzej Wajda ('Ashes and Diamonds', 'Man of Marble', 'Man of Iron').
This also included Renzo Rossellini, the son of Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter Roberto Rossellini ('Rome, Open City', 'Paisan', 'Journey to Italy').
During a two-year time period time during the late 1960s, Ophüls then embarked on his examination of France under Nazi occupation. He has also gathered about fifty hours of potentially usable material to edit.
This included the first film of which he is best known for co-writing and directing. This was the 1969 French/Swiss/West German black and white documentary/war film 'Le Chagrin et la Pitié' ('The Sorrow and the Pity').
The documentary examines in the aftermath of World War II that the French clung vehemently to a belief that they--and their Vichy government--had resisted the Nazi occupation of France.
However, Ophüls' seminal documentary finds that when the small city of Clermont-Ferrand is examined closely, the myth of French resistance slowly begins to crumble in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Vichy government willingly collaborated with German forces, for reasons ranging from fear to apathy to blatant anti-Semitism.
With a runtime of four-and-a-half hours, this epic two-part documentary tells an in-depth exploration about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II.
The film also uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration, including antisemitism, anglophobia, fear of Bolsheviks and Soviet invasion, and the desire for power.
The film shows the French people's response to occupation as heroic, pitiable, and monstrous—sometimes all at once.
The postwar humiliation of the women who served (or were married to) German soldiers perhaps gives the strongest mix of all three.
French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer Maurice Chevalier's "Sweepin' the Clouds Away" is the theme song of the film. He was a popular entertainer with the German occupation force.
It was the candid approach of 'The Sorrow and the Pity' that shone a spotlight on antisemitism in France and disputed the idealized collective memory of the nation at large.
Initially commissioned by French government-owned television to create a two-part made-for-television documentary, the film was banned after Ophüls submitted it to the studio that hired him.
After Ophüls submitted the film to them, the network head "told a government committee that the film 'destroys myths that the people of France still need'".
Author Frederick Busi later suggested that this was because of how uncomfortable it is to face the reality of collaborationism.
'The Sorrow and the Pity' "had its world premiere in Germany." In France, after its release, communists, socialists, and "independent groups" treated the film favorably, however, the far right disapproved on account of the director's background. Some French critics denounced the film as unpatriotic.
The film has also been criticized for being too selective and that the director was "too close to the events portrayed to provide an objective study of the period."
Writing of French conservative establishment groups' reactions to the film, Busi said:
"They, too, preferred that little be said about their role, and in some ways this reluctance is more significant than that of the extremists, since they represent so large a segment of society and mainly dominate contemporary politics."
It is frequently assumed that the reason was French reluctance to admit the facts of French history.
While this may have been a factor, the principal mover in the decision was French lawyer and politician Simone Veil, a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz who became a minister and the first president of the European Parliament, on the grounds that the film presented too one-sided a view.
The title of 'The Sorrow and the Pity' comes from a comment when a young woman asks her grandfather by a French pharmacist interviewee named Marcel Verdier in Montferrat, Isère, what he felt during the Occupation.
He says "the two emotions I experienced the most [during the Nazi occupation] were sorrow and pity". And the somber answer is just two stark emotions.
In the United States, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' was released in March 1972.
Time gave a positive review of the film, and wrote that Ophüls "tries to puncture the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans."
Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, and praised the depth and complexity of its human portraiture, which somehow still manages to avoid any abstraction of collaboration.
He wrote: "The Sorrow and the Pity" leaves you with the peculiar feeling of having spent a good deal of time, over the years, in the small French city of Clermont-Ferrand.
You know the inhabitants by name, and quite a few of their faces. You even knew some of their secrets, and what they privately think of one another."
He later concluded by saying: "Still, there are heroes and villains in “The Sorrow and the Pity,” and a great number of people in between whom, we finally come to realize, probably acted not much differently than we might have.
In its complexity, its humanity, its refusal to find easy solutions, this is one of the greatest documentaries ever made."
The following year of its release in the United States, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary, Features. However, it didn't win. This occurred at the 44th Academy Awards in mid-April 1973.
In the mid-1970s, Ophüls began producing documentaries for CBS and ABC.
During this time, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' had a wide influence in cinema. Most notably, this included Woody Allen's Best Picture-winning 1977 American romance/comedy film 'Annie Hall'.
In the feature, he pays an unexpected homage to the documentary -- twice.
In a famous scene featuring Marshall McLuhan, Allen's Alvy Singer drags Diane Keaton's reluctant Annie to a screening of the four-and-a-half hour film.
At the end of 'Annie Hall', in something of a personal victory, Alvy informs us that Annie has dragged her new boyfriend to the film as well.
In retrospect, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' had far more to do with 'Annie Hall' than we first realized back in the late 1970s.
The whole 'mockumentary' technique, with Allen's speaking directly to the audience, was crucially inspired by Ophüls' film, along with its central theme of making the right choices in life.
An ardent admirer and supporter of Ophuls, Mr. Allen is presenting the theatrical reissue of 'The Sorrow and the Pity', under the auspices of Milestone Films.
"It seemed to me during the making of 'Annie Hall' that it was such a symbol that one could aspire to in terms of art and recreation, and worth one's time in the cinema -- a parallel to literature or theater," Allen said by phone from his Manhattan office.
"It was still fresh on my mind. It was such non-junk in a sea of mediocrity, with no attempt to be popular or commercial.
It explored so much of the complexity. The attitudes. Future generations will have a taste of that era much more deeply. It's to the documentary what tragedy is to drama."
In 1981, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' was first shown on French television after being banned from that medium for years.
Of the documentaries that he produced for CBS and ABC, Ophüls' most notable of these turned out to be the second and final film of which he is best known for writing, producing, and directing.
This was the 1988 American black and white/color documentary/war film 'Hôtel Terminus: Klaus Barbie, sa vie et son temps' ('Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie').
With a runtime of four-and-a-half hours, the documentary tells of German SS and Gestapo functionary Nikolaus "Klaus" Barbie; the infamous "Butcher of Lyon". It was he of whom was directly responsible for the deaths of thousands during World War II.
However, unlike many Nazi war criminals, Barbie was able to escape from Europe to South America after the war with the help of American counter-intelligence forces.
This was until his arrest in the early 1980s, where he served as an anti-Communist counterinsurgency leader for various governments. The film traces Barbie's life from childhood through his 1987 trial four decades later.
All of this is set to music written by Ludwig van Beethoven and Academy Award-winning French composer and conductor Maurice Jarre.
'Hôtel Terminus' premiered at the 41st Cannes Film Festival in May 1988. While there, it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
One year later, it won an Oscar for Best Documentary, Features. This occurred at the 61st Academy Awards in late March 1989.
In the mid-2010s, Ophuls received the Berlinale Camera Award for his life's work. This occurred at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015.
During the time in between the event, the first DVD release of 'The Sorrow and the Pity' in France came in November 2011.
Among his credits, Ophûls is also known for directing 'A Sense of Loss' (1972), 'The Memory of Justice' (1976), and 'The Troubles We've Seen' (1994).
'The Sorrow and the Pity' has also had influences on films ranging from 'Reds' (1981) to 'This Is Spinal Tap' (1984), of which have shown evidence of its interview format.
Even 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999) is a kindred spirit of sorts, as are most prominent documentaries made since 1971, including Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' (1985) and Ophüls' own 'Hôtel Terminus'.
In fact, it's hard to believe that without the conscience-raising impact of 'The Sorrow and the Pity', the notorious Nazi war criminal Barbie would have been brought to justice.
Ophüls, unlike his father, prefers not to use the German umlaut in his name. Ophüls Sr. removed the umlaut when he took French citizenship, and Marcel has adopted the same spelling.
Like his father, Ophüls explores the nature of oppression and prejudice in his work. Rather than making fiction films, Marcel has concentrated on using the medium to document historical events and to disrupt people's complacency.
He has continued his father's legacy of films centering on oppression and prejudice, as he is also recognized for his lengthy but hard-hitting documentaries.
Although he enjoyed making entertaining films, Ophüls eventually became identified as a documentarian, using a characteristically sober interview style to resolve disparate experiences into a persuasive argument.
Ophüls has been active from 1950–present.
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