Word: sorrowful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SORROW AND THE PITY is an immense and truly extraordinary testimonial to humanity's infinite potential to do good or evil, but mostly to do nothing. In its four and a half hours it explores the effects of the Occupation on the French city of Clermont-Ferrand: its citizens and the outsiders who touched it, famous and not, French and foreign. It rediscovers the truths which lurk beneath the myth of French resistance, exposing the very ugly fact that collaboration and not resistance dominates the story. That this weakness is not exclusively French but characteristically human reinforces the horror...
Although an epic of sorts about World War II. The Sorrow is primarily a documentary of people--who are, after all, the substance of history. The events of the war are a framework and a point of departure, no more than that. The film carries the sad message of human fallibility and deals with the complex of eagerness and discouragement which drives men to apathy. Its lessons are taught by those who endured the war's daily life with more or less dignity. They are the bit players, but they fill this European stage. Ultimately, humankind's performance depends...
...Sorrow speaks with a very personal voice. It deals primarily with ordinary Frenchmen and Germans who have reduced the Holocaust to forms of individual and family history. Helmuth Tausend, a German officer stationed in Clermont-Ferrand, first speaks of the war as a six-year separation from his new bride. Marcel Verdier, a pharmacist, refers to the obsession with food he and his countrymen developed. Pierre Mendes-France, who was Secretary of State before the collapse, recalls both matters of government and of the desire for small needs like kitchen matches. Those who struggled against the Nazis give personal, seemingly...
...been a symbol of safety and accomodation. So many wanted a way out, and Petain was acceptable as an old man who couldn't harm anyone. The film's critique of him is personal--he was very much a defeatist--but it holds him as symbol, not scapegoat. The Sorrow's shame is collective...
HOLDING OUR ATTENTION all night--to say nothing of our interest--represents a nearly impossible feat, yet director Marcel Ophuls has handled his problems masterfully. The Sorrow is very, very long and emotionally draining, but it is not too long. Its straight-forward style allows the simple yet compelling themes of the people to come through. Recognizing the special difficulties of filming interviews. Ophuls keeps his camera moving, frequently setting the interview in motion: several take place in moving cars, others out in the French countryside. The setting reflects the speaker. The Graves brothers walk about their farm: Verdier...