Latest news with #Ophuls
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, L.A.-raised documentarian and Oscar winner, dies
Renowned documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, who, along with his family, fled Nazi Germany as a child and spent his formative years in Los Angeles before having a cinematic career which earned him both an Oscar as well as condemnation from some quarters, died Saturday in France, his adopted country. He was 97. Ophuls' death, first reported by news agencies, was confirmed by family members. He is survived by his wife, Regine, their three daughters and three grandchildren. The director's 1969 masterpiece, 'The Sorrow and the Pity,' an intense, four-hour work that made Ophuls' reputation, began as a project for a government-owned French broadcast network. Ultimately, though, it was banned and did not air on television until many years later, due to its searing indictment (or 'explosion,' as Ophuls preferred to called it) of the myth of France's heroic participation in the war — a false if popular version of events that ignored Vichy collaboration with the German occupiers. Born in Frankfurt in 1927, Ophuls was the son of film director Max Ophüls (his father later dropped the umlaut) and Hildegard Wall, a theater actor. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Ophuls clan left Germany for Paris. Then, when France fell, they settled in Los Angeles in November 1941, where Max Ophuls would come to enjoy a significant moviemaking career ("Letter from an Unknown Woman"). For young Marcel — German Jewish, a citizen of both France and the United States and fluent in three languages —the ethos and landscape of Southern California posed a very different and sometimes alienating experience. After graduating from Hollywood High, he was drafted by the U.S. Army and later enrolled at Occidental College in Eagle Rock, but still found assimilation difficult, revealing to writer Studs Terkel in a 1981 interview that, even as a refugee, he was shocked by the prejudice he observed toward people of color in the divided communities of Los Angeles following Pearl Harbor. 'When I made movies,' he said, 'one of the things that kept me from being too self-righteous is my memory of the Japanese kids who were in my class one day, then gone the next.' While his father Max struggled at first to find work in Hollywood, Marcel felt destined, as he often said, for a career in the film industry. As he revealed in his 2013 documentary memoir 'Ain't Misbehavin,' he began his career as an actor, playing, ironically, a member of the Hitler Youth in Frank Capra's 1942 War Department film 'Prelude to War.' Ultimately following his father to France in 1950, Ophuls turned to making nonfiction films for French television, after trying his hand in narrative cinema. 'My second film flopped, but it was a very bad film that deserved to flop,' he said frankly, speaking about his career in London in 2004. His self-deprecating brand of humor, tinged with a touch of irony, was often apparent in the interviews he conducted for many of his films, confronting former Nazis and collaborators. Alternately, his tone was infused with contempt, sarcasm or genuine sympathy for his subjects who had been victims of brutality unleashed by the Gestapo or secret police of the Vichy regime. Ophuls won the Academy Award for documentary feature in 1989 for 'Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,' which depicted the crimes of the head of the Gestapo in Lyon who, after the war, escaped French prosecutors with the help of U.S. Army intelligence, evading justice and living in South America until he was extradited to France from Bolivia in 1983. Barbie died in prison in 1991. Ophuls was also known for other documentaries, including 1976's 'The Memory of Justice,' about the legacy of the Nuremberg trials, and 1972's 'A Sense of Loss,' which dealt with the troubles of Northern Ireland. About his famous confidence when seated face-to-face with intimidating subjects — one interview was with Albert Speer, Hitler's chief architect and minister of armaments — Ophuls was characteristically candid and self-effacing. "He was so fantastically cooperative," he said of Speer. "He even offered to show me his home movies. It just seemed to me to be part of my job." Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Marcel Ophuls, L.A.-raised documentarian and Oscar winner, dies
Renowned documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, who, along with his family, fled Nazi Germany as a child and spent his formative years in Los Angeles before having a cinematic career which earned him both an Oscar as well as condemnation from some quarters, died Saturday in France, his adopted country. He was 97. Ophuls' death, first reported by news agencies, was confirmed by family members. He is survived by his wife, Regine, their three daughters and three grandchildren. The director's 1969 masterpiece, 'The Sorrow and the Pity,' an intense, four-hour work that made Ophuls' reputation, began as a project for a government-owned French broadcast network. Ultimately, though, it was banned and did not air on television until many years later, due to its searing indictment (or 'explosion,' as Ophuls preferred to called it) of the myth of France's heroic participation in the war — a false if popular version of events that ignored Vichy collaboration with the German occupiers. Born in Frankfurt in 1927, Ophuls was the son of film director Max Ophüls (his father later dropped the umlaut) and Hildegard Wall, a theater actor. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Ophuls clan left Germany for Paris. Then, when France fell, they settled in Los Angeles in November 1941, where Max Ophuls would come to enjoy a significant moviemaking career ('Letter from an Unknown Woman'). For young Marcel — German Jewish, a citizen of both France and the United States and fluent in three languages —the ethos and landscape of Southern California posed a very different and sometimes alienating experience. After graduating from Hollywood High, he was drafted by the U.S. Army and later enrolled at Occidental College in Eagle Rock, but still found assimilation difficult, revealing to writer Studs Terkel in a 1981 interview that, even as a refugee, he was shocked by the prejudice he observed toward people of color in the divided communities of Los Angeles following Pearl Harbor. 'When I made movies,' he said, 'one of the things that kept me from being too self-righteous is my memory of the Japanese kids who were in my class one day, then gone the next.' While his father Max struggled at first to find work in Hollywood, Marcel felt destined, as he often said, for a career in the film industry. As he revealed in his 2013 documentary memoir 'Ain't Misbehavin,' he began his career as an actor, playing, ironically, a member of the Hitler Youth in Frank Capra's 1942 War Department film 'Prelude to War.' Ultimately following his father to France in 1950, Ophuls turned to making nonfiction films for French television, after trying his hand in narrative cinema. 'My second film flopped, but it was a very bad film that deserved to flop,' he said frankly, speaking about his career in London in 2004. His self-deprecating brand of humor, tinged with a touch of irony, was often apparent in the interviews he conducted for many of his films, confronting former Nazis and collaborators. Alternately, his tone was infused with contempt, sarcasm or genuine sympathy for his subjects who had been victims of brutality unleashed by the Gestapo or secret police of the Vichy regime. Ophuls won the Academy Award for documentary feature in 1989 for 'Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,' which depicted the crimes of the head of the Gestapo in Lyon who, after the war, escaped French prosecutors with the help of U.S. Army intelligence, evading justice and living in South America until he was extradited to France from Bolivia in 1983. Barbie died in prison in 1991. Ophuls was also known for other documentaries, including 1976's 'The Memory of Justice,' about the legacy of the Nuremberg trials, and 1972's 'A Sense of Loss,' which dealt with the troubles of Northern Ireland. About his famous confidence when seated face-to-face with intimidating subjects — one interview was with Albert Speer, Hitler's chief architect and minister of armaments — Ophuls was characteristically candid and self-effacing. 'He was so fantastically cooperative,' he said of Speer. 'He even offered to show me his home movies. It just seemed to me to be part of my job.'
New Indian Express
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Marcel Ophuls, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who forced France to face its WWII past, is dead at 97
PARIS: Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary 'The Sorrow and the Pity' shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II, has died at 97. The German-born filmmaker, who was the son of legendary filmmaker Max Ophuls, died Saturday at his home in southwest France after watching one of his favorite films with his family, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert told The Associated Press. He died of natural causes. Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for 'Hôtel Terminus' (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was 'The Sorrow and the Pity' that marked a turning point — not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it 'destroyed the myths the French still need.' It would not air nationally until 1981. Simone Veil, Holocaust survivor and moral conscience of postwar France, refused to support it. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation — an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The French Republic, he insisted, had never ceased to exist. 'The Sorrow and the Pity,' which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: Filmed in stark black and white and stretching over four and a half hours, the documentary turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance — even the town's former Nazi commander — Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation.
The Advertiser
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Filmmaker who forced France to face its WWII past dies
Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II, has died at 97. Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for Hôtel Terminus (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was The Sorrow and the Pity, that marked a turning point - not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need" and did not air nationally until 1981. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation - an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The Sorrow and the Pity, which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: the film turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance - even the town's former Nazi commander - Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation. There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience's emotions - just people speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France's wartime story was not one of widespread resistance but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity. The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbours stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply got by, with resistance being the exception - not the rule. In a 2004 interview Ophuls said. "Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?" Born in Frankfurt on November 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the rugged Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States. Many years later, Ophuls settled in a home overlooking those mountains. He became an American citizen and later served as a US Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father's towering legacy that shaped his early path. He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features his path shifted to documentaries. After The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls followed with The Memory of Justice (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In Hôtel Terminus (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production. In The Troubles We've Seen (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media's uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle. He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn't. He is survived by his wife, Régine, their three daughters, and three grandchildren. Lifeline 13 11 14 beyondblue 1300 22 4636 Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II, has died at 97. Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for Hôtel Terminus (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was The Sorrow and the Pity, that marked a turning point - not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need" and did not air nationally until 1981. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation - an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The Sorrow and the Pity, which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: the film turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance - even the town's former Nazi commander - Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation. There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience's emotions - just people speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France's wartime story was not one of widespread resistance but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity. The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbours stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply got by, with resistance being the exception - not the rule. In a 2004 interview Ophuls said. "Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?" Born in Frankfurt on November 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the rugged Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States. Many years later, Ophuls settled in a home overlooking those mountains. He became an American citizen and later served as a US Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father's towering legacy that shaped his early path. He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features his path shifted to documentaries. After The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls followed with The Memory of Justice (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In Hôtel Terminus (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production. In The Troubles We've Seen (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media's uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle. He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn't. He is survived by his wife, Régine, their three daughters, and three grandchildren. Lifeline 13 11 14 beyondblue 1300 22 4636 Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II, has died at 97. Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for Hôtel Terminus (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was The Sorrow and the Pity, that marked a turning point - not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need" and did not air nationally until 1981. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation - an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The Sorrow and the Pity, which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: the film turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance - even the town's former Nazi commander - Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation. There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience's emotions - just people speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France's wartime story was not one of widespread resistance but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity. The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbours stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply got by, with resistance being the exception - not the rule. In a 2004 interview Ophuls said. "Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?" Born in Frankfurt on November 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the rugged Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States. Many years later, Ophuls settled in a home overlooking those mountains. He became an American citizen and later served as a US Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father's towering legacy that shaped his early path. He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features his path shifted to documentaries. After The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls followed with The Memory of Justice (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In Hôtel Terminus (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production. In The Troubles We've Seen (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media's uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle. He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn't. He is survived by his wife, Régine, their three daughters, and three grandchildren. Lifeline 13 11 14 beyondblue 1300 22 4636 Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during World War II, has died at 97. Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for Hôtel Terminus (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was The Sorrow and the Pity, that marked a turning point - not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need" and did not air nationally until 1981. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation - an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The Sorrow and the Pity, which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: the film turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance - even the town's former Nazi commander - Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation. There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience's emotions - just people speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France's wartime story was not one of widespread resistance but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity. The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbours stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply got by, with resistance being the exception - not the rule. In a 2004 interview Ophuls said. "Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?" Born in Frankfurt on November 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls and when Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the rugged Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States. Many years later, Ophuls settled in a home overlooking those mountains. He became an American citizen and later served as a US Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father's towering legacy that shaped his early path. He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features his path shifted to documentaries. After The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls followed with The Memory of Justice (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In Hôtel Terminus (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called "Butcher of Lyon", exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production. In The Troubles We've Seen (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media's uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle. He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn't. He is survived by his wife, Régine, their three daughters, and three grandchildren. Lifeline 13 11 14 beyondblue 1300 22 4636
