French-German documentary filmmaker and actor Marcel Ophüls, who debunked the myth that France resisted the Nazi occupiers of World War II in the film "The Sorrow and the Pity", has died at the age of 97. His family announced this on Monday, UNN reports with reference to France24.
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Ophüls, the son of famous German director Max Ophüls, "died peacefully on May 24", according to a statement his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert sent to AFP.
Ophüls, the son of famous German director Max Ophüls, is best known for shaking France in 1969 with the film "Sorrow and Pity", which tells about the occupied French provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand during the collaborationist Vichy regime (the collaborationist government of France, formed after the defeat in the war with Nazi Germany. It operated from 1940 to 1944).
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He subtly destroyed one of the country's most cherished myths - that France and the French had always resisted the Germans - and was banned from public television until 1981.
Through a documentary mosaic of interviews and newsreels, the film showed how widespread collaboration with the Nazis was in France at the time, from the humblest hairdresser to the top of high society.
Ophüls played down his achievement, stressing that he was not trying to condemn France, but simply doing his job.
For 40 years, I had to endure all this nonsense about this being an accusatory film. No, the purpose of this film was not to persecute the French and accuse them. Because who can say that his nation would have behaved better under the same circumstances?
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Despite lasting more than four hours, making the film massive and difficult to perceive, his film resonated with a generation, attracting crowds to cinemas at a time when documentaries were rarely shown on the big screen.