Best movie of this year hands down!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This is an excellent movie which documents the history of the French Government in the Second World War. I must admit I was quite unaware of this history which I suspect the French government and people would like to cover up. It is disgraceful history of collaboration with the Nazi's,which included persecution of the Jews, Frenchman being enlisted in the German army and huge amount of voluntary French labour being provided to the Nazi war machine.The most disturbing and chilling aspect is the interview with the former Nazi officer who is entirely unrepentant for what Hitler did and continually claims that he did not know what was happening or that others were responsible (ie the Gestapo killed the Resistance fighters and rounded up the Jews). This person continued to wear his Nazi medals with pride twenty odd years after the war. When asked why he decided to keep wearing them, when many other German soldiers refused to wear their medals, he responded by saying that the others did not wear their medals because they had not earned them. In another scene, he starts to make some jokes in response to a question about the persecution of the Jews while a young man, who I assume is his son, smirks smugly. One aspect of the history of France which I think the documentary glosses over were the extra-judicial killings of Nazi collaborators at the end of the war. I think that the documentary makers did not condemn these killings, but rather sought to justify them.In conclusion, it was a great movie which will take a couple sittings to get through given that it is over four hours long.

As with many films that feature in it, I probably would never have known about or seen this French film if it did not feature in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and that is the only reason I probably would watch it. Basically this documentary focuses on the German Nazi invasion of France during the Second World War, 1940 to 1944, due to the French Vichy government collaborating. Throughout the film director Marcel Ophüls interviews the politicians involved with the situation, the former resistance fighters, the former German Nazis who were involved, the religious types and other people affected by the invasion. The film is split into two parts, both two hours, "The Collapse" and "The Choice", including many stock footage moments made during the time, and it concludes with the important interview with France's Prime Minister. I will admit that I did not understand all of what was being talked about during the interviews, and I did doze off a little bit in certain parts that were a bit boring, but the stock footage stuff is interesting enough, and the opinions of what was happening was alright, so overall it is a worthwhile political documentary. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Documentary, Features for Ophüls, and it won the BAFTA for Best Foreign TV Programme. Very good!

We saw sorrow and the pity on DVD during this weekend. A powerful and moving documentary about life in Clermont - Ferrand during the war years. Although lengthy in running time the interviews are excellent and well prepared because it gives a balanced view of how life actually was during that time. It demystifies and, trough interviews, criticizes fascism, communism and democratic views as part of a complex political stage during that period. It really makes you understand part of the history of that period and phenomena that actually didn't make sense trough the vision of propaganda films or the victorious literature that tried to explain the reasons for many actions. It is a must see.

The documentary manipulates the audience with the audience fully cooperating with Ophul's ideas and point of view and the audience failing to see that Ophuls omits examining the communists and their role in the resistance. Like so many French intellectuals, Ophuls can not face the horrors of communism and glosses over their nasty, ambiguous role in the resistance. The film is wonderful in many ways, as many reviewers have pointed out. But most either don't know the complete story of the resistance in France or they are liberal and sympathetic to the communists in France and in Russia. It is so easy to demonize the Nazis and fascists, but in France it was and is still impossible to make an honest film that is truly comprehensive. What is particularly devious about this film is that it convinces the viewers that the whole story is being told. Like in blue state America, for many people there can be no enemy/evil doer on the left. Ophuls appears to feel more animosity for the middle class than communists who have killed millions throughout the word. He fools the audience into thinking he has shown everything about the Resistance, when an honest appraisal of communists and communist sympathizers and how they tried to exploit the resistance to advance communism is omitted. See the movie Uranus for a much more balanced view of the various participants in the resistance and a better, if more complex, view of the realities of life in France during the German occupation.