The Sorrow and the Pity (review)

b&w. 16 or 35 mm, to write to: Jerome Kuehl, Thames Television, Teddington Lock, Teddington Middlesex, Great Britain. INFORMATION EXCHANGE Walker Rumble and Keith Bird are presenting a course in conjunction with the journalism department at the University of Bridgeport: "The Historian and the Newsreel." They would appreciate the suggestions ofanyone with experience in teaching a similar course. Paul Vanderwood reports from San Diego State College that their "history through film" program just under way, is working out very well. He indicates that not only the students, but even some ofthe more skeptical teachers there have been stimulated by the project. The latest project ofthe British Universities Cortsortium on film is a film to teach some ofthe techniques ofreading medieval handwriting. FILM REVIEWS The Sorrow and the Pity by Martin A. Jackson The documentary has come a long way since the 1 920's when John Grierson and his disciples in Britain struggled to give shape and meaning to film as a reflection of reality. That it was a flawed reflection was not disturbing, indeed such flaws were inherent in the form, for as Grierson noted, the documentary was the "creative reconstruction of reality" and was not intended to record the world but to make it understandable to the viewer. Understanding implied that the documentary would have to embody the ideas and opinions ofthe filmmaker and that the film would not coldly record whatever passed in front ofthe lens but would shape and order the images into a statement based upon the director's social, political and intellectual awareness. In The Sorrow and the Pity. Marcel Ophuls has carried on the tradition of the documentary filmmaker but with such depth of feeling and compassion, with such complexity and intellectual rigor, that his work marks a quantitative leap forward for the form. The film is "about" the German occupation ofFrance in World War II but it deals on another level with the well-springs ofhuman behavior and raises questions ofthe most profound sort regarding political and social action. Ophuls" film is a mixture of archival and contemporary material, woven together with supreme skill into a vivid portrait ofa nation caught up in crisis. The memories ofthose who lived through the Occupation are recorded in long interviews and Ophuls has managed to put on film the thoughts and intimate ideas ofa wide variety ofpeople, from the village baker to Anthony Eden. These interviews are endlessly fascinating and it is easy to see why Ophuls was reluctant to cut the film below its present four-and-one-halfhour length. For what he is after is a portrait, complete as possible, ofFrench society in travail and a statement about human behavior in stress. The people he interviews, rich and poor, collaborator and resistance fighter, all contribute to this goal and to omit any side ofthe 41 story would be dishonest. No man is more, or less, important than another; each contributes to the complex mosaic. Just as the resistance fighter played out his role, so did the collaborator or the man who did nothing. To understand France in the Occupation, it is necessary to listen to all the varied tales. Ophuls is concerned with the moment of decision: the instant when people are faced with a moral choice. In France of 1 940, the decision, which may appear clear-cut in retrospect, was not simple for many Frenchmen. The social and cultural atmosphere of the time (a widespread anti-Semitism for example) determined how many people reacted. But it is the ambiguity ofhuman behavior that fascinates Ophuls; he seems more concerned with the people who did nothing rather than with those who took positive actions. A message that rings clearly throughout the film is that human behavior is not easily predicted, nor is it entirely logical. The resistance member cannot say precisely why he decided to fight, and he seems little different from another Frenchman who collaborated. For Ophuls, heroism appears in unlikely places at unexpected moments—bravery is not the prerogative of a single class and one can find the heroes and villains scattered almost at random throughout the population. Ophuls' film caused a sensation when it was released in 1970, for it implied very...