In April 1971, a documentary premiered in a small cinema in the Latin Quarter of Paris, which triggered a veritable earthquake of opinion in France, sparking polemics and scandals, but also storms of enthusiasm. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, “The House Next Door – Chronicle of a French City at War” took an unvarnished look at the years of German occupation. Marcel Ophüls chose Clermont-Ferrand as the setting and painted a portrait of a provincial town not far from Vichy between petinism, collaboration, passivity and resistance. The son of screen genius Max Ophüls questioned the memory of contemporary witnesses. He spoke to notables, businessmen, farmers, teachers and numerous political personalities. “The House Next Door” illuminated a previously repressed side of the French collective memory and conjured up the ghosts and demons of the years of occupation in order to break with the myth of a united France, cultivated by the Gaullists, that offered united resistance to the German occupiers.
More than 50 years after its release, Joseph Beauregard made a documentary about this unusual documentary. In it he traces the history of this unusual film. The documentary tells not only about its creation, but also about its impact on France, which had never been confronted with its behavior during the war and its incomplete memory of it.
2024-03-13 00:40:25
#film #shock #House #Door #documentary
