Cinema: Truth and Consequences

THE SORROW AND THE PITY

Directed by MARCEL OPHULS Screenplay by MARCEL OPHULS and ANDRÉ HARRIS

This epic newsreel and marathon talk show about the fall of France lasts four and one-half hours. Not one second of it is boring. There are moments, though, when a viewer wonders just where it may all be heading.

"I never saw the Germans," says one Frenchman. Says another: "I saw too many." Former Premier Pierre Mendès-France flashes on-screen recalling, in 1969, that during the 1939 "phony war," Paris ladies actually raised money for planting rose bushes along the Maginot Line—to reduce the ennui of the poilus...

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