The Sorrow and the Pity

Marcel Ophüls’s The Sorrow and the Pity is a veritable chorus of disparate voices and striking faces, exquisitely juxtaposed in a way that challenges the once widely accepted notion of a strong, resistant France in the face of evil.

It’s as if all of France were implicated as the documentary’s virtual reverse angle—its challenging, defiant closeup.

What I liked most about the film was that it accepted, indeed relied upon, the extraordinary particularity of the individual. There were one or two generalisations... but otherwise, typecasting was avoided.

Watch for Pierre Mends-France, who makes you feel better about the human race after the rest of the film has made you despair.

This is one of the most important -- and gripping -- documentaries on the Second World War and its aftermath.

It's valuable mainly as a brilliant assemblage of documents and testimonies.

The Sorrow and the Pity is surgical and functional, yet unquestionably a reflection of the imagination of an artist.

Nobody intelligently alive can find this epic film too long, or dull, or alien. Above all it is an incredible work of organization by director Marcel Ophuls.

Ophüls made The Sorrow and the Pity for French television in 1969 but broadcasters refused to air because it showed France as "exclusively populated by traitors". Searing and essential viewing to properly understand the war and Europe.


The Sorrow and the Pity, whose dark base, after all, is set in suffering and death, is nevertheless a celebration of life.