The Sorrow and the Pity

Powerful documentary originally made for French television in 1969 by director Marcel Ophuls.

The film chronicles the Nazi occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, using archive footage such as propagandist newsreels and footage of Maurice Chevalier singing for the German troops, coupled with personal interviews with French Resistance fighters and former German officers as well as government officials, spies, war veterans and ordinary citizens.

Focusing in particular on the occupation of one small French industrial city, Clermont-Ferand, the film asks probing questions about the anti-Semitism and xenophobia prevalent in French society at the time.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1972, and was famously used by Woody Allen as a leitmotif in his film 'Annie Hall'.