26-05-2025
Marcel Ophuls, director of 'The Sorrow and the Pity' and a reluctant master of documentary, has died
A whole world has come to an end with the death of Marcel Ophuls, the creator of the legendary Le Chagrin et la Pitié (The Sorrow and the Pity) – a documentary that, when it was released in 1969, blew the lid off the French cauldron of collaboration and antisemitism. This was a brilliant, cosmopolitan world, sparkling with culture and wit, whose roots lay in the Mitteleuropa of the 1930s, passed through the United States during World War II and ultimately ended in France – rich in days and in triumphs, yet haunted by suffering and struggle. Few can claim such a journey. The director died on Saturday, May 24, at his home in southwestern France at the age of 97, his grandson Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert announced.
Ophuls was born on November 1, 1927, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He was the son of Max Ophuls, a prominent German-Jewish filmmaker, and actress Hilde Wall. Five years later, with Adolf Hitler's rise to power in January 1933, the family packed their bags and moved to France. Their stay there was short-lived, as the Nazis continued to pursue the Ophuls family even into France. In 1941, they fled again, this time across southwestern France, where, much later in life and estranged from nearly everyone, Marcel would buy a house in Lucq with a solitary view – a constant reminder of his childhood flight. Some events mark a man indelibly. The desperate flight of an intellectual family, suddenly outcasts, across Nazi-occupied Europe, was one such event for Ophuls.
