Film Forum

Directed by Marcel Ophuls
France/Switzerland/West Germany, 1969
In French, German and English with English subtitles
Approx. 259 min. DCP.

The faces and stories from Ophuls’ epic of France under Nazi Occupation: farmers who shrug off their betrayal by neighbors; a cabaret performer determined to show that homosexuals could be as brave as other men; a former member of the French SS; a co-founder of the Resistance... Newsreels and film clips are intercut throughout, giving both a sense of the period, but also allowing us to see many of  the principals then and 30 years later, never more strikingly than in the juxtaposition of a middle-aged TV store owner with his younger self: the legendary “Colonel Gaspar,” as he salutes de Gaulle at the moment of Liberation. Rejected by French television, Ophuls’ classic moved from a single engagement at a tiny Left Bank arthouse to international success and acclaim —including an Oscar nomination — while ending the myth of an undivided and universally resistant France, but with a humanity that transcends vengeance. Says former British P.M. and wartime Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, “No one who has not lived through an occupation by Germany can possibly judge.”

With support from the George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema and the Joan S. Constantiner Fund for Jewish and Holocaust Films, donated by Leon Constantiner and Family

A MILESTONE FILMS/KINO LORBER RELEASE
 

Reviews

“So boldly conceived, richly textured and beautifully paced that its marathon running time feels more like a sprint.”
 – Xan Brooks, The Guardian

“A work of history that changed the course of history... its impact is exemplified in the opposition that it faced and ultimately overcame.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“In its complexity, its humanity, its refusal to find easy solutions, one of the greatest documentaries ever made.”
–  Roger Ebert

“Changed the face of the documentary forever.”
– Phillip French, The Observer