The Sorrow and the Pity (French: Le Chagrin et la Pitié) is a two-part 1969 documentary film by Marcel Ophuls about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany during World War II.

Part one of the film focuses on France's defeat by Germany in 1940, the initial support for armistice and the Pétain government, the beginning of German occupation, and the early stirrings of resistance.

Various explanations for France's defeat, capitulation, and acceptance of the Vichy government are offered, with differing opinions depending on the political leanings and class status of the interviewees.

Partisan actions and underground networks are discussed, as well as increased cooperation with German authorities by the Vichy government under the French prime minister Pierre Laval.

This part features a long interview with Christian de la Mazière, one of 7,000 French youth to fight on the Eastern Front wearing German uniforms.

Meanwhile, a guide points out items connected to the Hohenzollern royal family as he leads a tour through Sigmaringen Castle where the Vichy government was briefly based near the end of the war.

Interviews were conducted by Ophuls, André Harris or George Bidault, with:[1] Archival footage is interwoven through the film, featuring historical figures including: Initially commissioned by French government-owned television to create a two part made for TV documentary,[5][when?]

Writing of French conservative establishment groups' reactions to the film, "They, too, preferred that little be said about their role, and in some ways this reluctance is more significant than that of the extremists, since they represent so large a segment of society and mainly dominate contemporary politics.

While this may have been a factor, the principal mover in the decision was Simone Veil, a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz who became a minister and the first president of the European Parliament, on the grounds that the film presented too one-sided a view.

[8] In the UK, home media releases include a 2017 DVD and Blu-Ray from Arrow Academy which, among its extra content, features a lengthy 2004 interview with Ophuls by Ian Christie.

"[5][15] In the United States, Time magazine gave a positive review of the film, and wrote that Marcel Ophuls "tries to puncture the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans.