Talk:The Sorrow and the Pity

Let's Expand the Article

I updated the infobox based on the style guide with room for more information left in the source of the template. I am shocked at how underdeveloped this article is considering that this is a very significant documentary. I added a template that should give us some sources of information, however, I'm sure there's keywords, terms, and phrases that I'm not thinking of. In the end, perhaps, it's probably through restricted databases that we will get the real information (I suppose this is a niche topic and would primarily generate interest among a wide range of scholars).

We should also brainstorm and list pages that may have relevant information and sources. For example, Marcel Ophüls. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 09:39, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Here's another page that may prove useful: Résistancialisme. I'm going to add this term to the search box above. Also, we should look through Pages that link to "The Sorrow and the Pity" for more key terms, sources, and wikitext that may already exist on Wikipedia. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 20:28, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I also think that, based on Pages that link to "The Sorrow and the Pity" we should create the see also section. Here's the style guide.

I'm going to list mined wikitext below with links to the source pages:

In 1969, he was interviewed for Marcel Ophuls' film The Sorrow and the Pity, giving his reasons for joining the Resistance and recounting some of his wartime activities. The same year, he was instrumental in the creation of the Foire de Clermont-Ferrand festival, in Cournon-d'Auvergne.

From Émile Coulaudon

Writing for the New York Times, Vincent Canby concludes that despite the film's subject matter, it is "a no less harrowing examination of conscience than Shoah and Marcel Ophuls's 'Sorrow and the Pity'".

From We Were So Beloved

As a result of the film's shelving, it did not receive the same acclaim as other documentaries on the Holocaust such as Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955), and Marcel Ophüls’ The Sorrow and the Pity (1969).

From German Concentration Camps Factual Survey

Historical newsreel footage of Chevalier appeared in the Marcel Ophüls documentary The Sorrow and the Pity. In a wartime short film near the end of the film's second part, he explained his disappearance during World War II (see the "World War II" section in this entry), as rumors of his death lingered at that time, and emphatically denied any collaboration with the Nazis. His theme song, "Sweepin' the Clouds Away," from the film Paramount on Parade (1930), was one of its theme songs and was played in the end credits of the film's second part.

From Maurice Chevalier. Note: there may be a source for the above text. I will study the originating page more closely and, if that source cannot be found there, I will mark it as needing citation there (and here).

Additionally, the city was the subject of the acclaimed documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which used Clermont-Ferrand as the basis of the film, which told the story of France under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain. Pierre Laval, Pétain's "handman," was an Auvergnat.

From Clermont-Ferrand

The shattering of France's résistancialisme following the civil unrest of May 1968 was made particularly clear in French cinema. The candid approach of the 1971 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity shone a spotlight on antisemitism in France and disputed the official Resistance ideals. Time magazine's positive review of the film wrote that director Marcel Ophüls "tries to puncture the bourgeois myth —- or protectively skew memory -— that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans."

From French Resistance. Note: we need to transport the other citations from this page. This is not straightforward to me, since I am new to editing and learning as I go.

Max Ophüls's son Marcel Ophüls became a distinguished documentary-film maker, director of The Sorrow and the Pity and other films examining the nature of political power.

From Max Ophüls. Note: the context around this quote may be a lead to more information.

"(Up On Top Of A Rainbow) Sweepin' The Clouds Away" (1930 words and music by Coslow). Performed in the 1930 Paramount Picture Paramount on Parade. Popularized by Maurice Chevalier, it also was used as one of the themes of the 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity.

From Sam Coslow

File:Natan, Bernard, French movieproducer on trial 1936 circa.JPG

File:Natan, Bernard, French movieproducer on trial 1936 circa.JPG. Note: The image's caption says "Bernard Natan on trial in France for fraud circa 1936; Screenshot from the documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (part 1)."

::*'''Special Award:''' ::**''[[The Sorrow and the Pity]]'' ::

From 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

In 1972, as a tribute to her father, she translated the film The Sorrow and the Pity – about the collaboration of French nationals in a town during the Second World War. But her published works focused on the culinary traditions of her native land. Cuisine Of The Sun: Classical Dishes from Nice and France was published in 1976 and focused on the culinary traditions of Provence. It was followed by The Cuisine of the Rose in 1982, which focused on Burgundy.

From Mireille Johnston. Note: references are on the page, but were not correctly formatted or made inline. So you'll have to do some cleanup work there before adapting this to this page.

From the 7th edition, published in 2017.

From 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Note: it's mentioned in the expandable table.

Top Foreign Films

From National Board of Review Awards 1972. Note: I added the citation from an external link to an archived source.

From National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Corroborates the above.

He also featured frequently in Marcel Ophüls' 1969 documentary Le chagrin et la pitié, discussing the occupation of France in a wider geopolitical context. He spoke impeccable, if accented, French.

From Anthony Eden.

As historian Henry Rousso has put it in The Vichy Syndrome (1987), Vichy and the state collaboration of France remains a "past that doesn't pass away".

Historiographical debates are still, today, passionate, opposing conflictual views on the nature and legitimacy of Vichy's collaborationism with Germany in the implementation of the Holocaust. Three main periods have been distinguished in the historiography of Vichy: first the Gaullist period, which aimed at national reconciliation and unity under the figure of Charles de Gaulle, who conceived himself above political parties and divisions; then the 1960s, with Marcel Ophüls's film The Sorrow and the Pity (1971); finally the 1990s, with the trial of Maurice Papon, civil servant in Bordeaux in charge of the "Jewish Questions" during the war, who was convicted after a very long trial (1981–1998) for crimes against humanity. The trial of Papon did not only concern an individual itinerary, but the French administration's collective responsibility in the deportation of the Jews. Furthermore, his career after the war, which led him to be successively prefect of the Paris police during the Algerian War (1954–1962) and then treasurer of the Gaullist Union des Démocrates pour la République party from 1968 to 1971, and finally Budget Minister under president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and prime minister Raymond Barre from 1978 to 1981, was symptomatic of the quick rehabilitation of former collaborationists after the war. Critics contend that this itinerary, shared by others (although few had such public roles), demonstrates France's collective amnesia, while others point out that the perception of the war and of the state collaboration has evolved during these years. Papon's career was considered more scandalous as he had been responsible, during his function as prefect of police of Paris, for the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerians during the war, and was forced to resign from this position after the "disappearance", in Paris in 1965, of the Moroccan anti-colonialist leader Mehdi Ben Barka. Papon was convicted in 1998 as having been complicit with the Nazis in crimes against humanity.

From Vichy France. Note: you'll have to read through the sources to find the veracity of the claims about this documentary.

In 1969, Chambrun made an appearance in Marcel Ophüls's documentary on collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II, The Sorrow and the Pity (Le chagrin et la pitié). Chambrun wrote three books on the subject between 1983 and 1990. The Chambruns set up a foundation, the Josée and René de Chambrun Foundation, which collected documents on Laval for publication by the Hoover Institution. After Laval's death, the Chambruns brought flowers to his grave every October 15, to commemorate the day he was executed.

From René de Chambrun.

From List of French Academy Award winners and nominees it was nominated for best documentary film.

Memory, empire, and postcolonialism By Alec G. Hargreaves

From Christian de la Mazière. This provides a potential source. Refer to article.

=== Best Picture === 5. ''[[The Sorrow and the Pity]]'' (9 points)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.nationalsocietyoffilmcritics.com/?page_id=2|title=Past Awards|last=|first=|date=2015|publisher=National Society of Film Critics|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150323062049/http://www.nationalsocietyoffilmcritics.com/?page_id=2|archive-date=March 23, 2015|dead-url=yes|access-date=November 3, 2018}}</ref>

From 1972 National Society of Film Critics Awards. Note: the source is inconsistent with the copied wikitext. Check for other sources on the page. If wrong, correct both here and there.

Also refer to [[1]]. Perhaps the editor just accidentally copied the same reference material from 1971 to the 1972 page. Investigate later.

References

🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 23:08, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Useful resource Film templates. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 00:24, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

To do: identify earliest film poster possible in French to replace the current one with. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 01:47, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

To do: Remove my overuse of [[{{{1}}}]] once I create a list of the articles that don't have English language entries for them that should be inlined. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 05:15, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm now going to identify non-wikipedia sources to read through to contribute to this article using the helpful research box I put at the top. I will list them below as bulleted references.

• Busi, Frederick (Winter 1973). "Marcel Ophuls and the Sorrow and the Pity". The Massachusetts Review. 14 (1): 177–186. JSTOR 25088330 – via JSTOR.
• Jeffries, Stuart (January 22, 2004). "A nation shamed: Why does France keep making films that glorify the Resistance and gloss over the truth about collaboration?". The Guardian. Retrieved November 3, 2018. The Sorrow and the Pity, one of the greatest films about the Nazi occupation of France, was originally commissioned by a government-run TV station.
• Liebenson, Donald (January 19, 2001). "A Look at 'The Sorrow and the Pity' of France in World War II". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
• Petrakis, John (July 14, 2000). "'Sorrow' a Complete Look at how the French Dealt with the Nazis". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
• Hoffman, Stanley (1972). "On 'The Sorrow and the Pity'". Commentary. Retrieved November 3, 2018. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Paxton, Robert O. (February 8, 1973). "After the Fall". The New York Review of Books. Marcel Ophuls's recent movie, The Sorrow and the Pity, has tried to shatter both legends and to show how, for most Frenchmen, survival was the first consideration, although often an inglorious one. But Ophuls's movie was more concerned with undermining the myth of Resistance than that of Vichy (although it also demolished the claims of Pierre Laval's defenders), and more interested in the average Frenchman's reaction than in politics. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |subscription= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)
• Singer, Daniel (May 12, 1979). "The Politics and the Pity". The Nation. No wonder that The Sorrow and the Pity, the Marcel Ophuls film reviving through documents and interviews the real atmosphere of that period, produced such a shock when it was shown in a Paris cinema; children stunned by their discovery began asking their parents questions about the past and their past.
• Echikson, William (January 26, 1983). "Can Frenchman be Nazi collaborator . . . and a hero?". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
• Rowe, Paul K. (November 14, 1974). "Resistance, Rebellion and Death". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
• Williams, Kent (May 31, 2001). "The Sorrow and the Pity". Isthmus. Retrieved November 3, 2018. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
• Block, Tom (May 5, 2001). "The Sorrow and the Pity". CultureVulture. Retrieved November 3, 2018. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)

I'll stop with that batch, then move on to another. Hopefully listing these here will help other interested editors to find something to read to help contribute to the article. 🙅🙅🙅ShAsHi SuShIlA mUrRaY😣😣😣 08:20, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Article's confusion over the film's release date.

The article states in the lead and in the info-box that the film was released in 1969 but then body it states in the reception section that it was released in 1972. The article states the film had it's world premier in Germany but doesn't state the year. When did it premier in germany, assuming it did indeed premier in Germany first? When did it finally reach French theaters/cinemas (We know it was banned from French TV until 1981 but I assume it was shown in French Cinemas before then)? 1972 appears to be the year it premiered in U.S. movie theaters based on all U.S. movie critic reviews being from that year but the article refers to the film as being a 1971 film in opening sentence of the reception section. Was 1971 date it was released in Germany or France? I assume the film was completed in 1969 but we need to clear up if it premiered anywhere in '69 (or did it sit on the shelf for a few years before being released to Cinema in Germany in 1971, assuming the German debut claim is accurate and the 1971 date is a real premier date somewhere outside of the U.S.). --Notcharliechaplin (talk) 23:34, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Update: I read the Google translation of the French Wikipedia article on the "The Sorrow and the Pity" and it seems to state that the film was completed in 1969 but did not see a release in French Cinema until 1971. That would clear up the idea that the year of 1971 as mentioned in this article is the French Cinema release year. I'm going to go with the following facts: Completed: 1969, debut in Germany: 1971 (before the French debut), debut in France: 1971 (but after the German debut), debut in the U.S.: 1972. I would suggest we update the article to reflect these release dates assuming there is no disagreement on any of them. --Notcharliechaplin (talk) 23:57, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Notcharliechaplin, I agree with your reasoning. I will re-consult the source that gave the release date that created the ambiguity. I recall that it was a film review in a film studies journal (I believe I have the pdf downloaded, if not, I still have access through a database) that was written around the time of the American release and the author evidently was familiar with the details of the release and banning in detail from what must have been non-English (or just international) sources. I remember they wrote a section like a narrative that explained that the director went back to Germany to work, then decided to finish the film (editing or something I'm not sure) before it premiered in Germany. Once I consult the source, I'll add an appropriate quote to the discussion here. If it matches this writing, great. If there's any additional ambiguity, I'll ping you. However, from my memory I believe you have it straight! Thank you for improving the article! I'm a new editor so I need this kind of help. Sincerely, Shashi Sushila Murray, (message me) 11:53, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually, once I realized that I listed so many sources above, I was able to find it quickly. Here it is: Busi, Frederick (Winter 1973). "Marcel Ophuls and the Sorrow and the Pity". The Massachusetts Review. 14 (1): 177–186. JSTOR 25088330 – via JSTOR.

When Marcel Ophuls and his friends returned to work they were promptly fired. In search of a job, he found himself back in his native Germany where he worked for six months in Hamburg. Growing dissatisfied with that position, he decided to resume work on his documentary, and finally it was completed and had its world premiere in Germany. Later it was viewed on Swiss television.

The rest of the article has other details related to its development and release that may be worth including. Are you able to access it? If not, I'll reread it (when it's not super late--I'm so tired), and make a bulleted list (I don't want to type too much from it, since it's a journal article).

I suppose this would make sense, since he probably had to build a reputation for it before it could be aired in France. However, we don't have the dates! Sincerely, Shashi Sushila Murray, (message me) 12:05, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Removing the umlaut

According to his article, Ophuls prefers to spell his last name without the umlaut, since his father dropped it when he took French citizenship, and indeed his article does not use it anywhere. The French article about the film likewise does not use the umlaut. Yet we do.

Is there consensus for removing it from this article on that basis? Daniel Case (talk) 01:15, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

No objection having been voiced or comment made, I'm doing this. Daniel Case (talk) 20:04, 12 February 2020 (UTC)