Marcel Ophuls, the renowned French film-maker whose epic documentary The Sorrow and the Pity exposed the collaboration of the Vichy government in France with the Nazis, has died at the age of 97.
A later documentary, Hotel Terminus; the Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, on the Nazi war criminal known as “the Butcher of Lyon”, earned him an Oscar in 1988.
Ophuls was born as Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt in 1927 to the German actress Hilde Wall and a Jewish father Max Ophuls, who himself was a famous film director in his time.
When the Nazis came to power, the family left for France in 1933 along with other noted directors Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. In Paris, Max had his son baptised but it was no protection after the German occupation and the family fled again, finding safety in the USA where Marcel grew up in Hollywood.
