History, memory, and moral judgment in documentary film: On marcel ophuls's hotel terminus: The life and times of klaus barbie

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 509-539

  Suleiman, Susan Rubin ^a,b  

^a Department of Civilization of France ^*

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249644828     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/449050     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Theodor W. Adorno, "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" trans. Timothy Bahti and Geoffrey Hartman, in Bitburgin Moral and Political Perspective, ed. Hartman (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), p. 115
2. hereafter abbreviated "W." The German version is in Adorno, Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, ed. Gerd Kadelbach (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), pp. 10-28
3. Moishe Postone, "After the Holocaust: History and Identity in West Germany," in Coping with the Past: Germany and Austria after 1945, ed. Kathy Harms, Lutz R. Reuter, and Volker Dürr (Madison, Wisc., 1990), p. 238
4. See Anson Rabinbach, "Beyond Bitburg: The Place of the Jewish Question' in German History after 1945," in Coping with the Past, pp. 192-94
5. For a detailed and nuanced account of Adenauer's and other West German politicians' positions in the 1950s, which presents similar conclusions, see Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), chap. 8. The situation changed dramatically in the 1960s, especially after the student movement of 1968
6. See Herf, Divided Memory, chap. 5
7. Charles S. Maier, "A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy, and Denial," History and Memory 5 (Winter 1993): 150; hereafter abbreviated "S." This essay was originally delivered as a conference paper at Yale University, October 1992
8. See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Chicago, 1999)
9. See Henry Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy, de 1944 à nos jours, 2d ed. (Paris, 1990)
10. Eric Conan and Henry Rousso, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas (Paris, 1994)
11. and Rousso, La Hantise du passé: Entretien avec Philippe Petit (Paris, 1998)
12. The argument about judaeo-centrism is made most explicitly in Conan and Rousso, Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas, pp. 269-74
13. See Rousso, La Hantise du passé, pp. 122 and following
14. See Claude Lanzmann, "The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude Lanzmann," in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore, 1995), pp. 200-20
15. and "Hier ist kein Warum," in Au sujet de "Shoah": Le Film de Claude Lanzmann, ed. Bernard Cuau (Paris, 1990)
16. See Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory After Auschwitz (Ithaca, N.Y., 1998), chap. 4
17. For informative accounts of the debates over the Berlin memorial, see James E. Young, At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven, Conn., 2000)
18. and Caroline Wiedmer, The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany and France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999)
19. This was only an impression of mine, based on conversations and informal polling of audiences as I lectured on the film. The impression is confirmed by an article by the film's producer, John S. Friedman, who notes that despite its critical success the film had very limited distribution and did not earn back its production costs. See John S. Friedman, " 'Hotel Tennimis'le point de vue d'un producteur," Images documentaires, no. 18-19 (1994): 39
20. My account here is based in part on Erna Paris, Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair (New York, 1985), chaps. 2-6
21. Paris's book appeared two years before the actual trial but is informative and reliable about Barbie's earlier career and about the efforts to extradite him. Another account of Barbie's activities, especially detailed and suspenseful about his years in Bolivia and Peru, is provided by Magnus Linklater, Isabel Hilton, and Neal Ascherson, The Nazi Legacy: Klaus Barbie and the International Fascist Connection (New York, 1984)
22. Rousso devotes a whole chapter to the Barbie case, including an excellent explanation of the legal issues involved, and alludes to Barbie often throughout the book; the 1990 edition has even more on the trial. For a virtually day-by-day account of the trial, based on dispatches by the daily Liberation, see Sorj Chalandon and Pascale Nivelle, Crimes centre I'humanité: Barbie Touvier Bousquet Papon (Paris, 1998), pp. 13-164
23. See Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (New York, 1972)
24. and Marcel Ophuls, Le Chagrin el la pitii (screenplay) (Paris, 1980). The film was released in 1971
25. An early and passionate intellectual response to negationism in France was Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Les Assassins de la mémoire: "Un Eichmann de papier" et autres essais sur le révi-sionnisme (Paris, 1987)
26. written at the time of the Barbie case; trans. Jeffrey Mehlman under the title Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (New York, 1992)
27. For a detailed historical account, see Valerie Igounet, Histoire du négationnisme en France (Paris, 2000)
28. The best known memoir provoked by the Barbie trial is Lucie Aubrac's Ils partiront dans l'ivresse (Paris, 1984), trans
29. Alain Finkielkraut, Remembering in Vain: The Klaus Barbie Trial and Crimes against Humanity, trans. Roxanne Lapidus and Sima Godfrey (New York, 1992), p. 32
30. One scholarly journal did devote a special issue to Ophuls's work: Images documentaires, no. 18-19 (1994)
31. The role of photographs as figures for memory, especially in relation to the Holocaust, has been amply studied and theorized of late. See esp. Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge, Mass., 1997)
32. and Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago, 1998). Ophuls uses still photos-of Barbie at various times and in various settings, and of his victims during the war-throughout Hotel Terminus
33. Quoted in Melinda Camber Porter, Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture (New York, 1986), pp. 10-11
34. See Serge Klarsfeld, Les Enfants d'Izieu: line Tragédie juive (Paris, 1984)
35. For a study of the role of music in memory-films about the Holocaust, see Jean-Louis Pautrot, "Music and Memory: Listening to Lacombe Lucien, Night and Fog, and Night Rounds," Dalhousie French Studies 55 (Summer 2001): 168-82
36. For a study of Ophuls's use of film clips from Hollywood musicals in a later film, November Days (1990)
37. see Nora Alter, "Marcel Ophuls's November Days: German Reunification as 'Musical Comedy,'" Film Quarterly 51 (Winter 1997-1998): 32-43. Ophuls uses a few musical clips, notably the soundtrack from a Fred Astaire film, in Hotel Terminus as well
38. Richard Porton and Lee Ellickson, "The Troubles He's Seen: An Interview with Marcel Ophuls," Cine'aste 21, no. 3 (1995): 11; hereafter abbreviated "T."
39. For a thorough discussion of the various modes of documentary film, see Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), pp. 32-75; for the interactive mode, pp. 44-56
40. Marcel Ophuls, "Faut-il fusilier Speer au lieu de le filmer?" ["Should We Shoot Speer instead of Filming Him?"], Positif 200 (Dec. 1977-Jan. 1978): 115
41. See Patricia Hampl, "Memory's Movies," in Beyond Document: Essays on Non-Fiction Film, ed. Charles Warren (Middletown, Conn., 1996), pp. 51-77
42. Nichols, Representing Reality, p. 51
43. See Michel Ciment, 'Joy to the World: An Interview with Marcel Ophuls," American Film (Sept. 1988): 38-43; the allusions to Lanzmann are on pp. 41, 42
44. Golsan, "Revising The Sorrow and the Pity: Marcel Ophuls' Hotel Terminus," Vichy's Afterlife: History and Counterhistory in Postwar France (Lincoln, Nebr., 2000), p. 87
45. A particularly trenchant critique (which nonetheless recognized the importance of the film) appeared in the MIT student paper, The Tech; see Manavendra Thakur, "Hotel Terminus Is Sidetracked by Director Ophuls's Pent-up Feelings," 7 Feb. 1989, pp. 16, 21. See the web version at http://www-tech.mit.edu/V109/Nl/hoteI.0Ia.htmI
46. Ophuls, "The Sorrow and the Laughter," Premiere (Nov. 1988): 115; hereafter abbreviated "SL."
47. Jay Cantor, "Death and the Image," in Beyond Document, ed. Charles Warren, p. 39
48. See, for example, Ophuls "Un Cinéaste sur la piste de Klaus Barbie," interview with Michel Ciment, Le Point, 26 Sept. 1988, pp. 159-62
49. See Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York, 1998)
50. and Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Boston, 1998)