Marcel Ophuls four-and-a-half hour portrait of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand under German occupation from 1940-44 is one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as important as Claude Lanzmann s Shoah in its value not just as a film but as an essential historical record in its own right not least since its interviewees are all long dead. Describing the fall of France and the rise of the Resistance, with the aid of newly-shot interviews and eye-opening archive footage including newsreels and propaganda films, Ophuls painstakingly crafts a complex, nuanced picture... of what really happened in France over this period. He also demolishes numerous self-serving national myths to such an extent that, although he made the film for French television, they wouldn t show it for over a decade. But, as he demonstrates again and again, the overwhelming majority of French citizens during this period weren t heroes, villains or cowards, but simply ordinary people trying to make the best of an impossible situation. And it s Ophuls portrayal of these people, their hopes, their fears and their appalling moral quandaries, that remains unmatched in film history. [show more]
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Powerful documentary originally made for French television in 1969 by director Marcel Ophuls. The film chronicles the Nazi occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, using archive footage such as propagandist newsreels and footage of Maurice Chevalier singing for the German troops, coupled with personal interviews with French Resistance fighters and former German officers as well as government officials, spies, war veterans and ordinary citizens. Focusing in particular on the occupation of one small French industrial city, Clermont-Ferand, the film asks probing questions about the anti-Semitism and xenophobia prevalent in French society at the time. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1972, and was famously used by Woody Allen as a leitmotif in his film 'Annie Hall'.
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