The Sorrow and the Pity

Chronicle of a French village in the occupation years. Interviews are alternated with archive footage which. In this film, Ophüls unveils the myth of infallibility of the French resistance heroes by showing that the reality behind the myth was infinitely more complex. He reduces the resistance heroes to human proportions and shows people who were motivated by a mixture of courage and fear. As leading documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple noted: "It is truly a great film on several levels, one of which is its ability to show how people often rationalise in making decisions that may be good in the short term but could have terrible consequences."