“The Documentary Cinema of Marcel Ophuls

By María Elena de las Carreras Faculty Center, UCLA June 1, 2017

Presentaon for

“Shadows of the 20th Century: Ophuls Film Fesval"

Organized by the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies

UCLA, June 1-8, 2017

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset observed that

“Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias” - I am myself and my circumstances

Who is Marcel Ophuls and what are the circumstances of his life? Marcel Ophuls - A life in a few slides • Born in Frankfurt in 1927 • Son of Max Ophuls & Hilde Wall, stage director & actress • Family le Berlin in 1933 when Hitler came to power • Lived in France unl 1941 • Lived in Los Angeles unl 1950: Hollywood High School, GI in Japan, Occidental College • Seled in Paris: studied Philosophy & worked as an assistant on various films, including Lola Montès (1955) Max Ophuls with James Mason & Barbara Bel Geddes on the set of Caught (1949)

First steps in film & television

• 1956-59: Works for German television staon SWR

• 1960: Directs first documentary short Masse ou le talent du bonheur • 1962-64: Directs a short & two feature films “München” episode of L’amour à vingt ans Peau de banane/Banana Peel Faîtes vos jeux, mesdames

Change of professional course in 1966 ---

Moves to television news

Television Journalism

• 1966 – 68: Works for ORTF, French public television, reporng & direcng news features

Directs the television documentary Munich ou la paix pour cent ans (1967) for producers of news magazine program Zoom, André Harris & Alan de Sédouy

Fired for striking against ORTF, during the events of May 1968

From TV journalist to documentary filmmaker

• 1968-71: Works for NDR, German television staon in Hamburg

• 1969: Directs & produces with André Harris & Alain de Sédouys Le chagrin et la pié/The Sorrow and the Pity, about France under German occupaon in WWII

• 1970: Writes & directs two television documentaries The Harvest of My Lai & America Revisited

The 1970s: Between television & documentary features

• 1972: Directs television documentary A Sense of Loss, about the civil war in Northern Ireland • 1973-74: Vising Professor, Princeton University

• 1975-78: Staff producer at CBS News & ABC News

• 1976: Wrote & directed The Memory of Jusce, for producers Max Palevsky & Hamilton Fish, about the Nuremberg Trials

More television work in the 1980s

• 1980: Directs the documentary Kortnergeschichte for German television

• 1982: Directs documentary Yorktown, le sens d’une victoire, for French television

• 1985: Directs the documentary Les Tombes du Président for French television Yorktown, le sens d’une victoire (1985) From late 1980s to 1990s

Writes & directs three documentaries:

• 1988: Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of , about the crimes of a Gestapo officer in France, during WWII

• 1991: Novembertage/November Days, about the fall of the Berlin Wall and its implicaons

• 1994: La veillée d' armes/The Troubles We’ve Seen, about journalists in war me Sarajevo

First person documentaries

• 2009: Writes and directs Max by Marcel, about his father

• 2013: Illustrates his autobiography, Mémoires d’un fils à papa (2013) with Un voyageur/ Ain’t Misbehavin’, a documentary in the form of a trip to important places in his life

• 2014: “Unpleasant truths/Des vérités désagréables”, about the Israeli Palesnian conflict – documentary in progress

Marcel Ophuls and his circumstances

• German Jewish roots in Mieleuropa - cosmopolitanism, fin-de-siècle culture, secularism

• Encounter with the US in a formave stage in life - American values embedded in its popular culture, a way to live and think

• At home in three languages, anchored by a strong sense of identy, history & polical ideas

• Desire, opportunity and talent for a career in show business

These circumstances have translated into a remarkable body of work

• Marathon historical epics about Europe in the 20th century, including The Sorrow and the Pity The Memory of Jusce Hotel Terminus

• His documentaries inially pioneered a new type of historical reportage that consistently evolved into documentary essays about historical and polical events, and their legacy, both moral & intellectual • An Ophuls documentary is centered on issues of individual & communal guilt, truth, complicity, heroism, the suppression of memory, the reckoning the present must make with the past

• The Holocaust is the linchpin of these documentaries – directly or indirectly

• His work has influenced Claude Lanzmann, Michael Moore, Ken Burns, & most recently Ezra Edelman (O.J. Made in America)

• Ulmately, Ophuls’ best films are about prevenng the erosion of historical memory.

• They explore, through interviews or his own thinking, the problem of jusce in a world in which no one is free to cast the first stone

• You leave an Ophuls’ film with more quesons than answers, & an understanding of the complexies & ambiguies of human behavior (of people & their circumstances)

• In Hotel Terminus, November Days and The Troubles We’ve Seen, Ophuls adds a sense of spectacle that again reorients the historical epic

• Working from an European humanist tradion – Ophuls looks at these tragic events from an ironic distance when dealing with evil & indifference, & profound compassion for those that are good & simple The Grave brothers, the humble heroes of The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) Albert Speer, le, a Hitchcockian villain in The Memory of Jusce (1976) Dissecng an Ophuls documentary

The filmmaker has noted: “Je suis un cinéaste de ficon frustré” - A frustrated director of ficon films

- This helps explain the use of dramac strategies undergirding his documentaries: - Interviews - Eding

Constructing the story– “le récit”:

• The noon of ‘portmanteau’ (coat hanger), or base idea, to build the documentary

• The role of archival research in reconstrucng primarily the “experience” of the past, not “knowledge” about it

This is a key difference with the historical documentary made unl Munich & The Sorrow and the Pity. Watch either of them back to back with Night & Fog (1956) or Mourir à Madrid (1963), & the contrast is striking

• The role of interviews is twofold: to remember the past, but also to reveal character & mentality (the characters’ ideas & beliefs shape their percepon & memory of the past )

Masterful interviews: Marius Klein in The Sorrow & the Pity, Markus Wolf & Egon Krenz in November Days

• Egon Krenz in November Days (1991) • A “découpage” of the interviews substutes for a tradional script. It becomes the guide to the eding process

• Eding is used as a mulpurpose dialeccal tool: to juxtapose contradictory tesmonies to intersperse film clips to create ironic distance to connect the past & the present intellectually or emoonally to supplant commentary

“Le montage fondé sur la contradicon" Eding November Days with long-me collaborator Sophie Brunet Frederick Wiseman & Marcel Ophuls, Ain’t Misbehavin’ (2013) Ophuls’ essenal documentaries

• 1969 The Sorrow and the Pity • 1972 A Sense of Loss • 1976 The Memory of Jusce • 1988 Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie • 1991 November Days • 1994 The Troubles We’ve Seen: A History of Journalism in Warme • 2013 Ain’t Misbehavin’ Essenal Readings by/on Marcel Ophuls

• Lowy, Vincent. Marcel Ophuls (2008)

• Ophuls, Marcel. Mémoires d’un fils à papa (2013)

• Rubin Suleiman, Susan. “History, Memory, and Moral Judgment in Documentary Film”. In The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (2008)