# The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)

> A two-part documentary investigation into how ordinary French people, and the Vichy regime, collaborated with Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/106041

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 2
- Episode runtime: 122 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, history
- Created by: Marcel Ophüls
- Network: Das Erste
- Cast: Marcel Ophüls, André Harris, Solange Azan, Georges Bidault, Matthäus Bleibinger, Charles Braun, Maurice Buckmaster, Emile Coulaudon
- TMDB rating: 8.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066904/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: none
- Tone: sober, unflinching, contemplative, uneasy, analytical

## What critics say

Critics broadly acclaim this documentary for its unflinching, multi-perspective examination of collaboration and memory in Occupation-era France.

## Synopsis

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) is a German and Swiss documentary miniseries created by Marcel Ophüls, a two-episode historical inquiry that runs about two hours in total. Rather than dramatize events, it assembles long on-camera interviews with resistance fighters, former collaborators, politicians, and ordinary townspeople, with Ophüls himself appearing as the interviewer who keeps pressing for specifics. Figures such as Georges Bidault, Maurice Buckmaster, Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie and René de Chambrun speak about their roles during the German occupation and the Vichy government led by Marshal Pétain. The engine of the film is the question of how a nation that later celebrated its resistance came to accommodate Nazi rule, and the interviews turn on pride, fear, opportunism, and self-justification. The tone is sober and deliberately unsettling, with long silences, uneasy admissions, and no comforting myths. Set in 1940 to 1944 France, it moves through the city and the countryside with patient attention to memory. Shaped as a single documentary inquiry rather than a serialized story, it suits viewers drawn to wartime history and political documentary. Fans of Shoah, The World at War and Lacombe Lucien will find resonance in its testimony-driven approach to occupation, complicity and national memory.

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