TRIBUTE

MARCEL OPHULS: AN APPRECIATION

by Peter L. Stein
Theres a running joke in Woody Allens Annie Hall in which his
morose character, Alvy Singer, keeps dragging his reluctant girlfriend on movie dates to see Marcel Ophuls groundbreaking,
magisterial opus The Sorrow and the Pityor as Annie Hall dismisses it, a four-hour documentary on Nazis. (Its actually four
hours, 11 minutes, and deals with Occupied France.) After their
breakup, Alvy wistfully observes one positive sign of his lasting
impact on Annie: Shes now taking her new boyfriend to see the
same film. Alvy may have lost her for good, he seems to say, but
at least Annie now has Marcel Ophuls in her life.

born Max Oppenheimer, changing his name first to Ophls as

a stage name, and then dropping the umlaut in later years to
reflect French pronunciation, as well as perhaps an anti-German
bias; his son, born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer, would adopt the
same surname and spelling).
Marcel was only five years old when Hitler came to power, but
the impact on the family was immediate; joining the first wave
of German Jewish artistic exiles in 1933, they fled first to France,
becoming naturalized citizens there, and upon the German occupation in 1940 were forced to flee once again through Spain,
arriving in Hollywood in 1941. Max struggled at first to find a
professional foothold, but young Marcel seemed to take quickly
to life in America: He attended Hollywood High School, served
in the US Army just after World War II in Japan, attended UC
Berkeley for a time, and became a US citizen in 1950the same
year his father returned to France to begin a spectacular string
of features, including La Ronde, The Earrings of Madame de,
and Lola Monts.

If only most Americans could be as lucky as Annie Hall: falling

early into a deep relationshipperhaps even a kind of sober
lovewith one of the seminal documentary filmmakers of the
genre. Most of us may know Ophuls only from those glancing
references to his lengthy masterwork, or from the fact that a later documentary film of hisHtel Terminus: The Life and Times
of Klaus Barbienot only won an Academy Award but helped
expose the widespread postwar government collusions that allowed Nazi war criminals to hide in safety. But Ophuls career
and work have far transcended the pigeonhole of Nazi chronicler; now 87 years old, his film subjects, which have ranged
from the Vietnam War to Northern Ireland and most recently to
the Israel-Palestine conflict, can be finally appreciated for the
moral lens through which they view the most painful episodes of
human conflict: their chief target, as film writer David Thomson puts it, is nationalist confidence, and the crimes done in
its name.

As a young man, Marcel set about to follow his father into entertainment, first as an actor (appearing as a teenager in Frank
Capras Prelude to War) and then behind the scenes, assisting
John Huston on Moulin Rouge and his father on Lola Monts.
His first solo directorial efforts were in scripted genre materiala short romance (Love at Twenty) and a madcap suspense
caper (Banana Peel, starring Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Paul Belmondo). It was only when he started working for French television that his wide-ranging political interests found expression
in his films.

Marcel Ophuls life trajectory parallels some of the most momentous upheavals of the 20th century, so it may not seem
surprising that he turned his lifelong artistic energy to weighty
political subjects. But that was not his early intention at all. Born
in Frankfurt, Germany in 1927, his father was the heralded German Jewish film director and romanticist Max Ophuls (himself

In the late 1960s he began shooting interviews and scenes that

reconstruct the story of one French town, Clermont-Ferrand,
during the German occupation. The resulting film, The Sorrow
and the Pity (see page 146), would prove to be groundbreaking,
myth-shattering, and career-making. Ophuls began the film in
the aftermath of tumultuous political unrest in 1968 Paris (during

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which, amongst many upheavals, Ophuls and other progressive
director that he would treat the film with respect and admirajournalist colleagues went on strike from the government-contion. Never mind the respect and admiration, Ophuls wrote
trolled broadcaster ORTF and were not allowed back to work
back. Just make it funny.
for months). Whether as an outgrowth of this turmoil, or as part
of Ophuls own reckoning with the trauma of his familys expeThat kind of directness, tempered by occasional flashes of hurience in Vichy France, his quietly insistent interviews began to
mor, would continue to characterize Ophuls nonfiction films.
pull back the curtain on what historian StanAfter the success of The Sorrow and the
ley Hoffmann has called the Official VerPity, he turned his unflinching camera onto
It was such non-junk in
sion of wartime France that had persisted
other flashpoints in world affairs, deploying
for decadesthat of a country uniformly
thoroughness and nuance and managing to
a sea of mediocrity, with
engaged in a noble resistance, save for a
avoid the pitfalls of preachy, smug, or tenno attempt to be popular
few outlying and reviled collaborators.
dentious filmmaking. Instead, he searches
for the humanity of his subjects, even when
or commercial. Its to the
Instead, Ophuls reveals Vichy France in
their actions are contemptible, and for the
documentary what tragefar more troubling complexity: through
complexity of events, even when we would
the recollections not only of highly placed
prefer simplicity. In The Memory of Justice
dy is to drama.
military men and ministers but of everyday
(1975), he examines the Nuremberg trials
Woody Allen
farmers, soldiers, shopkeepers, and hairby most accounts a high point in American
dressers, he weaves an intricate tapestry of
human rights and humanitarian valuesbut
human failings interrupted by occasional acts of great courage.
views them through the lens of the Vietnam War, asking us to
The prospect of challenging the Official Version was so upsetconsider the fraught nature of moral authority in the hands of
ting to the French national self-image that the documentary
a victorious nation. And in Htel Terminus, another staggering
was for a time banned from French airwaves. Retired President
four-hour-plus investigative film, Ophuls, as narrator-interviewCharles de Gaulle was even consulted on the matter; when iner, departs from the calm solemnity of his voiceovers and beformed that the film reveals unpleasant truths, de Gaulle is
comes by turns sarcastic, ironic, a dogged detective, and an
said to have replied, France does not need truths; what France
impatient interlocutor. It is a bravura performance by a director
needs is hope.
in a supporting role.
Despite the initial backlash at home, The Sorrow and the Pity
would be universally hailed as a milestone in documentary filmmaking. Breaking boundaries of traditional length to tell a large
story; juxtaposing, without apology or qualification, conflicting
accounts to develop tension within the film; using popular songs
and period footage both to bolster and occasionally undercut
the unfolding history; and incorporating his own gentle but
piercing questions of his interview subjects, Ophuls created a
new set of standards for nonfiction narrative, one that would be
quoted (Shoah), imitated (Reds), and eventually parodied (from
This Is Spinal Tap to The Office) for decades to come.
One of the films greatest admirers, Woody Allen, recalled its
early impact: It was such non-junk in a sea of mediocrity, with
no attempt to be popular or commercial. Its to the documentary what tragedy is to drama. When writing Ophuls for permission to use clips of it in Annie Hall, he took pains to reassure the

The mischievous side of Ophuls is far less known and appreciated than his gravitas, but despite the weightiness of his films he
retains a buoyant, puckish streakclearly on view in his autobiographical film, Un voyageur (a traveler), which he insisted
on releasing in English under the cheeky title Aint Misbehavin
(see page 116). Generously peppered with clips from his favorite films, raucous memories of his father, and reminiscences by
notable players in his career, it is a fond and desultory amble
through a remarkable life.
Even now as he approaches his 90s, the messy world of human affairs is never far from his mind. His current filmstill in
productionwades into the sticky politics of the Middle East,
positioning the half-Jewish, former refugee Ophuls in conversationor perhaps engaged argumentwith his co-director,
the unabashedly secular and self-critical Israeli filmmaker Eyal
Sivan. Ophuls seems to enjoy not making things easy. With a
nod toward de Gaulles pronouncement about The Sorrow and
the Pity, and as an apt summation of the work he has committed into our consciousness over an extraordinary career, he has
chosen a fitting title for his upcoming film: Unpleasant Truths.
How fortunate we are that Marcel Ophuls has continued to tell
those truthsunpleasant, necessary, funny, unavoidablein
such particular fashion, and with such universal resonance, for a
world much in need of hearing them.
Peter L. Stein is a Peabody Award-winning documentary maker and
a frequent writer, producer, and presenter of film, television, and arts
programming. He is the former Executive Director of the San Francisco
Jewish Film Festival and currently Senior Programmer for Frameline.

THE SORROW AND THE PITY

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