The Sorrow and the Pity

While Parisian ‘society’ continues in its usual spin of theatre, opera, horse racing and carefully choreographed love affairs under Nazi occupation, the sleepy town of Clermont-Ferrand welcomes their new-found German rulers with open arms. In the midst of all this, thousands of socialist-minded workers, gypsies and refugees are witch-hunted, imprisoned and then transported to concentration camps and eventual death. These are just some of the rumours and counter-rumours, truths and untruths offered by the interviewees in Marcel OPHÜLS’ notorious documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which charts the activities of French patriots during World War II.