Show Business: A Battle Over Justice

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The controversy that Ophuls has managed to stir up has rattled the producers. Lieberson told the London Times two weeks ago, "We never tried to impose our philosophical ideas on the movie." In fact, the film, which is now approximately 3½ hours long, severely alters Ophuls' intention. Many of his interview questions have been cut, along with footage of his family (his wife was a member of Hitler Youth) and of Germany during the Weimar Republic and later in the painful process of denazification. Also excised was a scene of middle-aged Germans, nude in a mixed sauna, discussing their feelings toward Jews. The BBC had particularly objected to the sequence on the ground that pubic hair had no place in a political film.

High Figure. What Becker has added is flashy combat footage from Viet Nam. Ophuls wrote in a memorandum to the producers that "theatrical equations (Auschwitz-Napalm or Hitler-Nixon) . . . could only lead to the reinforcement of cynicism and hopelessness.

My position on this issue is closer, finally, to Telford Taylor than to Daniel Ellsberg." Becker's version comes down strongly on the Ellsberg side, seeming to countenance his assertion that American policymakers were "guilty in the same way that German officials were guilty."

The result of all this anger and obfuscation is that audiences are likely to see a major film—perhaps a great one—only in truncated form. The BBC and Polytel have already approved the Becker version. David Puttnam says V.P.S. will sell the Ophuls version for "any serious offer in the region of 112,000 pounds sterling" ($263,200), a forbid dingly high figure for a documentary based on V.P.S. 's accounting of the film's cost. It is also an estimate heatedly contested by Ophuls, who says that he has not been shown the budget since last July, despite the fact that he was the nominal producer of the film.

In any case, if V.P.S. gets no takers, the negative of the film will "soon" be cut to conform with Becker's recasting.

Ophuls has notified Puttnam and Lieberson that he wants "no credit at all" on the aborted version of The Memory of Justice, and if they use his name he will "sue the pants off them." The backers —particularly the BBC — still may use Ophuls' name, perhaps in some nebulous phrasing like "Conceived by Marcel Ophuls." No one who has seen any of Ophuls' previous work would ever believe it.