The Sorrow and the Pity

The Sorrow and the Pity
Movie poster
FrenchLe Chagrin et la Pitié
Directed byMarcel Ophuls
Written by
  • Marcel Ophuls
  • André Harris
Produced by
  • Alain de Sedouy
  • André Harris
Cinematography
  • André Gazut
  • Jürgen Thieme
Edited byClaude Vajda
Production
companies
Release date
  • 18 September 1969 (1969-09-18)
Running time
251 minutes
CountriesFrance
West Germany
Switzerland
LanguagesFrench
German
English
Box office$13,082

The Sorrow and the Pity (French: Le Chagrin et la Pitié) is a two-part 1969 documentary film by Marcel Ophuls about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II. The film uses interviews with a German officer, collaborators, and resistance fighters from Clermont-Ferrand. They comment on the nature of and reasons for collaboration, including antisemitism, Anglophobia, fear of Bolsheviks and Soviet invasion, and the desire for power.

The title comes from a comment by interviewee Marcel Verdier, a pharmacist in Montferrat, Isère, who says "the two emotions I experienced the most [during the Nazi occupation] were sorrow and pity".