Word: waffen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Almost universally, people who see Sorrow and Pity come out with admiration and respect for Christian de la Masiere, a French aristocrat who fought in the Waffen SS for the Nazis on the Eastern front against Russia--in retrospect hardly the most justifiable position for a Frenchman during World War II. Ophuls himself said "I feel I have the right to judge Fascists" like la Masiere, and judge them severely. Yet we are unable to judge this man harshly--his principles, yes; his person, no. And this fact has confused many people who have tried hard to tease...
...French politics. He swallowed revolutionary ideology whole, and of the two forms possible to him in 1940-Communism or the Germans' national socialism- he chose the latter. This film follows De la Mazière all the way to the Eastern front where, in the uniform of the Waffen SS as part of the infamous Charlemagne division, he fought against the Russians. Rueful, logical, charming, ready to regret but not to grovel, French to his fingertips, De la Mazière, despite what he did, finally seems a sympathetic and even scrupulous man whose experience adds a small human...