Soon afterwards, a new slogan became popular, "Collaboration is: Give me your watch, I'll give you the time."
Quite an interesting documentary film. There was so much material although not much stuck out from what I already had an idea about. But it showed not a very good picture of the French authorities as well as the French Citizens. They do have some criticism of the British Fleet sinking the French Fleet but considering that everything left behind in France became the property of the Nazis, then I can see the reasoning.
Made for French television, Marcel Ophüls' four-hour-plus documentary explores the average French citizen's memories of the Nazi occupation. Just how large and effective was the fabled resistance movement? Is cooperation the same thing as collaboration? And how did one's up-close-and-personal experiences with the occupation troops impact one's postwar life? These questions are probingly posed (but not all are answered) by Ophüls, who also acts as offscreen interviewer. The first half of the film is a mosaic of sights and sounds from the years 1940-1944: Maurice Chevalier singing for the German troops, clips of propagandistic newsreels, appalling vignettes from the scurrilous anti-Semitic film drama Jew Suss (1940), and the like. Ophüls' interpretation of history as the "process of recollection, in things like choice, selective memory, rationalization" is fully illustrated in the film's long second half, which is devoted almost entirely to interviews, in which the subjects display emotions ranging from mild embarrassment to abrupt rage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Theatrical Feature Running Time: 251 mins
The Sorrow and the Pity (1971)
Anglophobia
"I hate the lies that have harmed us so much." Veteran of the French division of the Waffen SS
Mers-el-Kebir|[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir]Attack on Mers-el-Kébir[/url]
"Le Juif Suss" or "Jew Suss"
If ever a Jew commits a sin of the flesh with a Christian woman, he shall be hung without further ado, as punishment, and as an example for all others.
"Mr. Heydrich is president of the International Criminal Police, a commission to which France has always belonged."
Part 2:The Choice
Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv
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