The Sorrow and the Pity

The Sorrow and the Pity
Movie poster
Directed by	Marcel Ophüls
Written by	Marcel Ophüls André Harris
Release date	September 18, 1969
Running time	251 min.
Language	French/German/English

The Sorrow and the Pity (French: Le Chagrin et la Pitié) is a two-part 1969 documentary film by Marcel Ophüls about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II. The film uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration. The reasons include antisemitism, anglophobia, fear of Bolsheviks and Soviet invasion, the desire for power, and simple caution.

Part One of the film, The Collapse, has an extended interview with Pierre Mendès France. He was jailed by the Vichy government on charges of desertion, but escaped from jail to join Charles de Gaulle's forces operating out of England, and later served as Prime Minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955.

Part Two, The Choice, revolves around Christian de la Mazière, who is something of a counterpoint to Mendès France. Whereas Mendès France was a French Jewish political figure who joined the Resistance, de la Mazière, an aristocrat who embraced Fascism, was one of 7,000 French youth to fight on the Eastern Front wearing German uniforms.

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) Vichy men perhaps gives the strongest mix of all three. Maurice Chevalier's "Sweepin' the Clouds Away" is the theme song of the film.

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