Marcel Ophüls, writer of the awkward documentary about Vichy’s France | Culture | EUROtoday

In 1971 a small documentary of greater than 4 hours entitled was launched in a small cinema in Paris Sadness and piety. It was the “chronicle of a French city” below the Vichy regime. It was a discreet premiere, however that scandalized the nation, as a result of it put him in entrance of an uncomfortable fact: his function through the Nazi occupation. Marcel Ophüls, his writer and regarded the daddy of the fashionable historic documentary, died this Saturday at age 97 at his house within the southwest of France. He at all times needed to make fiction, however ended up signing one of many nice masterpieces of the style, a historical past lesson that dismantled the heroic discourse that Paris had constructed on its resistance.

He was born in Frankfurt (Germany) in 1927, however lived wandering. Son of the filmmaker of Jewish origin Max Ophüls (writer of Letter of an unknown o Lola Montes) and of actress Hilde Wall, left Germany in 1933 and settled in France, the place they fled once more in 1941 in direction of the US. Exile marked his work, though he stated he had lived “as a privilege, a form of personal enrichment”, for the potential for realizing different cultures. “Exile was a loss, but there was also a gain part,” stated Lesinrocks in an interview.

He labored as a administration assistant along with his father, however till he died, in 1957, he didn’t begin his first undertaking. Made a primary documentary after which some fiction tapes, together with Banana peelwith Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau. In 1969, together with two journalists, and on fee of public tv, Rodó Sadness and piety. The thought was to inform, by way of archiving photos and interviews, life in an busy metropolis, Clermont-Ferrand, between 1940 and 1944. This is the situation by which a number of the protagonists of the time (navy, politicians, present residents, former troopers or resistant) are parading, which reveal, with their testimonies, all of the contradictions of the French society in these years.

France, within the 70s, was not ready for this conscientious examination and the French public chain refused to challenge the documentary. He premiered on the cinema of Saint Séverin, in Paris, because of the intermediation of director François Truffaut, good friend of Max Ophüls. Then it was projected in different rooms, efficiently, however the chain nonetheless didn’t wish to broadcast it. The director of that point, Jean-Jacques of Bresson justified: “This film destroys the myths that the French still need.” Simone Veil, who was then within the board of administrators of the chain, stated he soiled the picture of France. It was not lastly seen on televisions till 1981.

His defenders, together with Truffaut himself, claimed the dedication and braveness of his work, however he at all times minimized him. “We cannot believe that cinema is a pedagogical tool. Even that extended idea that Sadness and piety He has changed the point of view of France and the French about his own history, in my opinion, it is propaganda ”of the co -authors, he stated, referring to journalists André Harris and Alain de Sédouy, who collaborated within the realization of the interviews.

Ophüls ended up making documentary and non -fiction, however the authentic of his work is on the intersection of each: he contributed to the primary parts of the second, by way of these interviews that “are not interviews, but conversations” and the agile meeting. “I have not invented the assembly, but I think I have developed a form of non -fiction story that did not exist before, using the same base recipe,” he instructed The world.

He made different documentaries, which had been broadcast above all overseas, however none efficiently. THE MEMORY OF JUSTICEwhich was offered on the Cannes Festival in 1976 and addresses the political context that makes warfare crimes doable, or November days (1990), after the autumn of the Berlin Wall. He received an Oscar in 1988 with Hotel Terminus (1988), concerning the Nazi prison Klaus Barbie, “Lyon’s butcher”, who took refuge in Bolivia. A undertaking started with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard concerning the battle in Israel, who didn’t materialize, and one other entitled Unpleasant truthson the identical theme and that the sunshine didn’t see both. In 2013 it premiered in Cannes A travelerabout their recollections within the US and France.

It was outlined as somebody “full of contradictions.” He himself married a lady who had been within the Hitler youth. He instructed, as an anecdote, that when he lived in Hollywood along with his dad and mom, he labored as a figurant in Why we combatby Frank Capra, and needed to sing and do the Nazi greeting.

One of his greatest prescribers was Woody Allen, who pays tribute to the film Annie Hall. The protagonist who interprets tries to persuade his associate, Annie (Diane Keaton), to go see the documentary Ophüls. It is on the finish of the movie when it occurs: when they’re already separated and meet within the tail of a cinema the place Annie has taken her new associate to see Sadness and piety.