06/04/2001

By / The Dallas Morning News

Say you've made a great film, written a great novel or created an otherwise esteemed work of art. Yet your accomplishment, praised it may be, is thought of largely in relation to a popular movie.

Got it? Good. Now you know how Marcel Ophuls feels about discussing Annie Hall.

"[Expletive] Annie Hall," says Mr. Ophuls by phone from France, and you're not quite sure if he's kidding. Mr. Ophuls, son of the opulent French director Max Ophuls, is discussing his landmark 1971 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which shows on Turner Classic Movies Wednesday at 7 p.m.

And it seems that he's a bit tired of fielding innocent questions about Woody Allen's homage to the film in his own 1977 comedy.

"The assumption is that my film wouldn't be known without Annie Hall," he continues, voice rising. "Let's not discuss that."

Uh, that might be your assumption. We just wanted to know how you felt about Mr. Allen's heartfelt tribute (see sidebar). But hey, if it's a sore spot, no big deal.

Mr. Ophuls goes on to make clear his respect for the Wood Man as person and artist.

"I love Woody Allen. We're a mutual admiration society," he says. Indeed, he reveals that Mr. Allen contributed $50,000 to the making of Mr. Ophuls' Oscar-winning 1987 documentary Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie. He also partly funded the restoration of Sorrow.

But Mr. Ophuls' reaction speaks volumes for the place (and potential paranoia) of the documentary filmmaker – and about the subject of The Sorrow and the Pity. Subtitled "A Chronicle of a French City Under the Occupation," Sorrow is exhaustive (more than four hours long), penetrating and consistently revelatory. It's a document of not just a single town (Clermont-Ferand) or a single war, but of the vagaries of human nature under duress.

And yet you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of contemporary moviegoers who know about it, and many of those who do would mistakenly describe it as a Holocaust documentary rather than a story about the French Resistance.

When Annie Hall complains that she's "not in the mood to see a four-hour documentary on Nazis," she may very well be speaking for the general public. Add another 24 years of brain-numbing entertainment to the equation, and you're ready to praise the nobility of TCM for giving folks a chance to tune in.

Willful ignorance is indeed a primary subject of The Sorrow and the Pity, and some of the subjects have plenty of reason to live in denial. Speaking dispassionately to former Nazis, Resistance leaders and the many, many folks caught in between, Mr. Ophuls gets at the heart of such matters as patriotism, fear and apathy. After digesting the candy-coated schmaltz of Pearl Harbor, The Sorrow and the Pity goes down like a tonic of sticky truths.

Mr. Ophuls shot the film in 1969, a year after French student upheavals. As he recalls, many of his interview subjects were eager to justify themselves to their kids, to let the whippersnappers know what it was like back in the day.

"There are short periods when people see the connections between their history and their own morality," explains Mr. Ophuls. "I probably would have more trouble doing it now, but that was a time when people were very eager to discuss what Daddy did during the war."

Initially banned from French television, The Sorrow and the Pity was released theatrically last year in the same English-subtitled, original French- and German-language version that will air on TCM. It also came out on video earlier this year. But TCM still deserves kudos for stepping up and showing such an important, unglamorous film.

It's one more reminder that the cable channel can't be dismissed as a mere repository for old Hollywood movies. By the way, they do a good job with those, too: The Sunday night "essentials" series will feature The Maltese Falcon, A Night at the Opera and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in the coming weeks. September will bring a retrospective of the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, hardly a household name in these parts.

A

7 p.m. Wednesday, Turner Classic Movies. 4 hrs. 30 min. Though already famous in its own right, The Sorrow and the Pity received a big boost in recognition when Woody Allen paid homage in his Oscar-winning 1977 film Annie Hall.

Two minutes late to see Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face at the Beekman, Annie and Alvy (Diane Keaton and Woody Allen, left) ponder alternative possibilities.

Alvy: Let's go see The Sorrow and the Pity.

Annie: Oh come on, we've seen it. I'm not in the mood to see a four-hour documentary on Nazis.

After watching The Sorrow and the Pity (again) at The New Yorker, Alvy and Annie talk at home.

Alvy: Boy, those guys in the French Resistance were really brave. Having to listen to Maurice Chevalier sing so much...

Annie: I know. Sometimes I ask myself how well I'd stand up under torture.

Alvy: You? Are you kidding? The Gestapo would take away your Bloomingdale's charge card and you'd tell them everything.