This is the second part of my list of five documentaries that I love and hope that you will discover and love too. The first part, in which I lurch from historical curios to sexual fetishes and underground comics, can be found here: Part One.
The Sorrow and The Pity (1969)
Perhaps due to its appearance as an anti-date movie in Annie Hall, Marcel Ophuls’ The Sorrow and The Pity is often unfairly relegated to the punch line of jokes about gruelling and dull ways to spend an evening. It’s true that Ophuls’ film is a pretty mammoth undertaking but for those willing to persevere it can also be an immensely rewarding one. Filmed in 1969 (although not released until 1981 due to objections from the French government) and clocking in at a mammoth 251 minutes, Le chagrin et la pitié (to give it its French title) is an in-depth look at the behavior of the inhabitants of the French town of Clermont-Ferrand during Nazi occupation.
In a sense The Sorrow and the Pity could almost be watched as a companion piece to Albert Camus’
A striking poster for the film.
powerful1947 novel La Peste, which deals with the same subject by using disease as a metaphor for occupation and I will admit that having this book in the back of my mind certainly helped me clarify my experience of this gargantuan film. There is a famously enigmatic quote at the end of this novel, ‘What we learn in time of pestilence [is] that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.’ It is The Sorrow and The Pity’s inability to either confirm or deny this statement that makes it so compelling and the audience is forced to try (and fail) to make the moral judgments that the film so stubbornly avoids.
The Sorrow and The Pity is split into two parts. The first of these, entitled The Collapse focuses on the French Resistance and particularly on Pierre Mendès-France, a Jewish political figure who was a key member of this group. The second, entitled The Choice, presents us with the other side of the coin recounting the story of Nazi collaboration particularly that of Christian de la Mazière, a member of the upper classes who fought under the banner of Fascism. As well as these key figures and other well-known persons (including British primeminister Anthony Eden), Ophuls also spoke with the ordinary townspeople who were faced with the impossible choice of collaboration or resistance. This puts a very human face on this grueling situation and by the film’s close you really do feel as if you have lived among these haggard, corrupt, heroic and deeply relatable people in their little town of Clermont-Ferrand. Perhaps the most remarkable and uncomfortable thing about the film is it’s lack of moral judgments particularly given the film’s relative proximity (just over twenty years) to the events it describes. Anthony Eden provides us with perhaps the most useful way of processing this when he states that, ‘One who has not suffered the horrors of an occupying power has no right to judge a nation that has.’ By the end of The Sorrow and The Pity it is impossible to argue with him and we realize that this is perhaps the closest we’ll get to an understanding of Camus’ inscrutable sentiment.
The Sorrow and the Pity is currently available on region 2 DVD and is well worth setting aside time to watch.
Capturing the Friedmans (2004)
The Friedmans celebrate during happier times.
Arnold and Elaine Friedman and their three sons were pretty much your archetypal middle class family living in a small town in upstate New York in the 1980s. He was an upbeat and well-liked teacher who ran a computer class out of their basement while she was a hardworking housewife whose rather serious demeanour made her the butt of her husband and three sons’ high-spirited jokes. Like many upwardly mobile families of the period, their favourite pastime was recording their mundane yet happy lives on their personal video camera (a relatively new innovation at this time). They were content, down to earth and almost aggressively normal, like a Jewish 80s Cleavers. All this came crashing down in November 1987 when their typical suburban house was raided after Arnold was accused of molesting several children in his computer class. Extraordinarily, the family did not give up their beloved hobby and continued to record every tense discussion and blistering argument on videotape as more and more allegations were made, son Jesse was accused and their family began to disintegrate.
Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmansassembles this startling footage and intercuts it with interviews
The accusations tore the family apart
with the family, police and victims. What makes the films so gripping is that it is cast in the mould of a thriller with each new piece of evidence or witness testimony contradicting something that the audience had earlier been convinced was fact. The result of this is that you are never really sure of anything except the truly subjective nature of truth and, by the film’s close, it is almost impossible to make any definitive judgements about Arnold and, to a larger degree, Jesse’s guilt. This style is undoubtedly effective and makes the film breathtakingly gripping. However, its moral implications have opened it up to some justified criticism and it is hard to watch the film in the same way now that news has emerged that Jarecki (who had previously declared himself to be impartial) actually funded Jesse Friedman’s appeal.
What earns Capturing the Friedmans a place on this list though is it’s unique, self-documented insight into a family in turmoil; the way each family member deals with the traumatic events is a master class in psychology and it is staggering to consider why on earth they chose to film themselves going through this horrible ordeal. Elaine Friedman is perhaps the most fascinating character in this respect, the seemingly emotionally fenced-off wife who was oblivious to her husband and son’s crimes. She is also arguably the most sympathetic of the Friedmans and it is heartbreaking to watch as her family continues to favour their father, frequently taking sides against Elaine even after he is prosecuted for the most despicable crimes. A great documentarian will often start with one subject and allow it to develop organically into something entirely different. This is certainly the case with this film, which started out life when Jarecki interviewed son David Friedman, who is a clown by profession, for a documentary he was making on children’s entertainers in New York City. That this light-hearted film spawned Capturing The Friedmans is as intriguing as it is darkly ironic.
Capturing The Friedman’s is currently available on Region 2 DVD and come with a wealth of special features including Jarecki’s ‘Just a Clown’, the documentary on New York clowns that introduced him to David Friedman, and a wealth of documents (including a psychologist’s assessment of the victims) which are provided as DVD-Rom content.
Read Part 3, in which I discuss my favourite feature length documentary.
Charles Rivington can be followed on Twitter at @crivington.