Le Chagrin et la pitié (1969)
Directed by Marcel Ophüls

Film Review

By any standards, Le Chagrin et la pitié is a monumental piece of film documentary.  For one thing, it dares to make an objective assessment of one of the most difficult periods in France's history - the German occupation of that country during World War II.  In addition to being one of the most important documentaries ever made, it is also one of the most compelling and well-made, despite its modest style.

The film combines shockingly frank interviews with players in the drama with archive footage (mainly newsreel excerpts).  Although the film is nominally centred around the town of Clermont-Ferrand, it does go further afield, venturing to Paris, rural France, Germany and London.  Through its very simple documentary style and a plethora of material (not a minute of the film's four and half hours is wasted), Le Chagrin et la pitié conveys a very real sense of what it must have been like to have lived through the Occupation.  It is a profound, enlightening and thought-provoking piece of work.

The film was directed by Marcel Ophuls (son of the great German film director Max Ophuls) whose investigative documentaries earned him international acclaim.  It was originally commissioned by the French television channel, ORTF, as part of a series of three films about recent French history.  When its producers André Harris and Alain de Sédouy were dismissed from the channel for participating in the political uprisings of May-June 1968, Marcel Ophuls had to turn to a German television company to finish the film.  Ironically, it was with German money that Le Chagrin et la pitié was completed.

When the ORTF refused to broadcast the film, its first public airing was in a small Parisian cinema in April 1971.  The film immediately unleashed a storm of controversy and was condemned vociferously as being unpatriotic.  In particular, many saw it as a direct assault on the government of General de Gaulle, since it significantly diminished the role of the general during World War II.  The film continued to be shown at specialist cinemas and film festivals throughout the world and was nominated for an Academy Award (in the "best feature documentary" category) at the 1972 Oscars.  It was not until 1981 that the film was shown on French television, when it attracted an audience of 15 million viewers.

Le Chagrin et la pitié is a film in two parts.  The first part (L'Effondrement ) shows how a France which was divided politically and socially proved to be an easy conquest for the almighty German war machine.   Fearful of losing their wealth and status, and also seeing fascism as an effective counter to communism, the bourgeoisie offered up no resistance, and, for them at least, life went on much as before.  For the working classes, it was a different story.  With political parties and strikes outlawed, workers' rights no longer existed and most ordinary people lived under repression.  As the film makes clear, the main concern for most people during the Occupation was simply having enough food to eat.

France was not just divided socially - it was also divided physically.  The northern and western parts of the country were directly controlled by the Nazis, whilst the south was governed from the town of Vichy by a puppet president, Marshal Philippe Pétain, and his prime minister, Pierre Laval.   Most French people seemed prepared to accept the situation and responded positively to Pétain's trite mantra: Travail, Famille, Patrie.

In the second part of the film (Le Choix), which looks at the last two years of the Occupation, we see how growing distrust and resentment germinated into opposition and created a growing resistance movement.   Whilst scores of French men and women risked their lives to free their country, others became ever more complicit in Nazi activity, denouncing their own neighbours, supporting the anti-Jewish purge and enlisting in the German army.

Most of the material in the film consists of interviews (most of which were conducted by Ophuls), making this a very personal and vivid account of the Occupation.   The recollections of the film's contributors are obviously tainted by their experiences and, for many, it is apparent that the wounds have yet to heal - in spite of the fact they are recounting events which took place almost thirty years before.  As the accounts are sometimes contradictory and often have a strong personal bias, this patchwork quilt of revelations forms a very complex picture, suggesting that any simple assessment of the Occupation would be both both flawed and unjust.  In an archive clip, Anthony Eden (British Prime Miniser after the war) eloquently states that no one who has not been confronted with the threat of invasion from an overwhelming enemy can condemn the French for their capitulation.  However, it is hard not to be moved by the testimony of some of the film's contributors and we are ultimately led to cast judgement - not on the French nation as a whole, but on individual men and women who were galvanised to perform acts of great evil, or great good.

By allowing the villains and heroes of the piece to speak freely, the film gives a more graphic and forceful account of events than will ever be divined in any history book or wartime drama.  The film begins with a stomach-churning interview with a high-ranking Nazi officer, who apparently still sees himself as a member of the Super Race and has no qualms of his participation in the Holocaust (to the point of not understanding why his fellow countrymen have such misgivings about the period).   In another chilling interview, aristocrat Christian de la Mazière candidly tells André Harris how, as a young man, he was seduced by fascism and became one of the 7000 Frenchmen to sign up for the Charlemagne division, a special SS unit assigned to the Eastern Front.

On the side of the heroes, a farmer, Louis Grave, gives a solemn personal account of the work he and his brother did for the resistance.  Grave was denounced by a neighbour and ended up in a concentration camp; his bitterness is still apparent 25 years on.  A British spy, Denis Rake, movingly recounts the extreme generosity of ordinary French people he saw whilst he was serving in France; by contrast he received next to no support from the bourgeoisie.   Pierre Mendis-France (who became Prime Minister some time after the war) talks at length about his opposition to the Vichy regime, which led to his imprisonment; he managed to escape to England when he joined the Free French forces.

Surprisingly, there is very little mention of De Gaulle's movement, La France Libre, which took control of France after the Liberation by the allies in 1944, but which had very little support in France during the Occupation.   De Gaulle claimed that his movement played a key role in the resistance, something which the film seems to take issue with.

The film ends with an archive extract in which popular singer Maurice Chevalier attempts to justify a concert he gave in Nazi Germany.  He claims, in English, and without a great deal of conviction, that he was there not for the benefit of German troops but merely to entertain French prisoners of war.   With brutal irony, this sequence succinctly sums up how much of the French nation must have felt about the Occupation - an overwhelming sense of guilt, self-admonishment and naïve optimism that it could be put behind them and forgotten.  The fact that the many contributors in the film still felt so strongly about events which took place nearly thirty years in the past suggests that the incident could not be so easily swept under the carpet.  It is evident that the wound would take many more decades to heal and, even then, a unpleasant stain would remain, etched into France's collective memory for generations to come.

Film Synopsis

Life in France at the time of the Nazi Occupation during World War II.  Those who actively participated in the drama - politicians, soldiers, aristocrats, spies, collaborators and resistance supporters - recount their  personal experiences with lucidity, eloquence and emotion.