There were several profound anti-war films in the years that followed the First World War. Chief among them were Abel Gance's J'accuse, King Vidor's The Big Parade, Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front, and G. W. Pabst's Westfront 1918 and Kameradschaft, but Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937) remains the most lyrical attack that the cinema has ever launched against the institution of war. It’s ‘a film about war without a single scene of combat’ as historian Jonathan Rosenbaum put it in 1999, ‘but it's still one of the key humanist expressions to be found in movies.’
Made on the eve of the Second World War, the picture was an eloquent plea for peace that failed. Tinged with melancholy and regret, it suggests that the real divisions that produce war are those of class, not nationality. Set in a German prisoner of war camp during the First World War, the film concerns a French mechanic, Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), a Jewish garment maker, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), a French aristocrat, Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), and the arrogant German aristocrat, Commandant von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim in his most memorable performance). Emblematic of the futility of war is the tunnel dug by the French prisoners; before they can use it to escape, they are moved to another camp - all the labour spent on it has been wasted. Eventually de Boeldieu is imprisoned in a medieval fortress commanded by the same von Rauffenstein, now disabled by a spinal injury and strapped to the chin in an iron-and-leather corset. Aware of the absurdity of war and that their class is doomed, they form a friendship that illuminates Renoir's passionate belief in man's humanity.
Grand illusions are the dreams by which men live: patriotism, race, class, national boundaries, hatred, and war. La grande Illusion celebrates the fraternity and equality of men, and the war they fight reveals the falsity of all prejudice. It is this that makes Renoir's audacious achievement an enduring masterpiece.
Mastered from the original camera negative, this stunning restoration of the full-length version is a revelation.
During WWI, three French aviators are shot down by German air Ace, von Stroheim. Taken prisoner, they end up in the camp he runs. He treats his fellow officers with grace and dignity but as the French escape the film moves into both tragedy and redemption. Banned in Germany and declared 'Cinematographic Enemy No. 1' by Goebbels, it was believed at one time that the original camera negative had been destroyed. Renoir's classic film shows that the brotherhood of man recognises no frontiers.
Discovering 'La Grande Illusion' for the first time is one of those cinematic experiences which remind the viewer that the achievments attainable in cinema are all but... more >
Discovering 'La Grande Illusion' for the first time is one of those cinematic experiences which remind the viewer that the achievments attainable in cinema are all but limitless. It is also a movie that leaves you pondering what it must have been like to have seen the film at the time of its release.
We all know that the influence cinema has is often exaggerated by film enthusiasts but there is little doubt that in 1937 La Grande Illusion had a profound effect on audiences at the time bracing themselves for the impending chaos of World War. President Roosevelt thought it was a film every man had a moral duty to see whilst the authorities in Nazi Germany declared the film 'Public Enemy No.1'.
No doubt Joseph Goebbels, the arch propagandist of the Third Reich's war machine, was discomfited by the clarity and urgency of the film's unmistakeable humanist sentiment. Contrast this with the Nazi exhortations to sugjugate self-interest to the prerogatives of the state and it's easy to see why this masterpiece of human compassion had him so hot under the collar.
Made in 1937 La Grande Illusion was intended to reach a wide audience and, in so doing, Renoir partially abandons some of the more satirical flourishes normally associated with his work, preferring instead to adopt some of the more conventional orthodoxies of the day to deliver an exciting action-drama top-ended with a tender romance between a French officer and a kindly German widow.
However, this being a Renoir film, not everything is quite as it seems. Beneath the surface is a powerful and compelling disquisition on the prevailing presumptions over class, kinship and human nature. Many have read La Grande Illusion as a pacifist film and in many ways it is, but here Renoir eschews any temptation to place a pacifist at the heart of the movie, indeed none of the charachters in the film could be described as such. Most are just ordinary men weary of conflict and wanting nothing more than simply to return to their old life! The paradox is, of course, each of them has come to realise that there will be no old life to return to. For each of them, Jean Gabin's Captain Marechal in particular, there is a realisation that this war will force them to reassess their previously cast-iron notions of class, race and nationhood for good.
Incidentally, one of the less discussed reasons for the success of La Grande Illusion, in France at least, was its prestigious cast. Apart from Gabin playing the working-class pilot officer, La Grande Illusion boasts a veritable who's who of French male stars of the day. There is Marcel Dalio, playing Lt. Rosenthal, a cheery but philoshopical Jewish heir to a family of new money. Gaston Modot, familiar from his work with Bunuel and Julien Duvivier is a sympathetic NCO and Julien Carette, introduced in the opening titles simply as "Carette" was possibly the most popular comedian in France. And, of course, there is Erich Von Stroheim, the Camp Commandant subsumed with disgust that should be reduced to the role of 'custodian' having sustained terrible injuries as a fighter-pilot. His performance is noticeably more mannered than that of his co-stars but somehow it seems wholly appropriate for playing a man who cannot face the inevitabilty that his world of aristocratic honour, pride and esprit de corps will soon give way to a new order, a world belonging to the Marechals and Rosenthals.
This was a cast-list that was, almost certainly, an irresistable draw to French cinema-goers of 1937. It is testimony to the skills of Renoir that he does not allow the film to become over-laden by the presence of so many screen luminaries as is so often the case when a film features a big name cast.
La Grande Illusion makes a passionate case for the primacy of the individual in the face of national folly. But this is a film possessed of such deftness and understated eloquence that the audience finds itself offering little resistance to its reasoning. Goebbels, who had a deep appreciation of the art of film,
would have spotted this immediately and hence seen the danger it presented. And, for all this, La Grande Illusion is carefully wrapped in a thrilling prison-escape drama that grips the audience from the opening scene all the way through to the glorious final moment where two German soldiers allow themselves a brief, wistful moment to wish they could swap places with the two escaping Frenchmen they were, moments earlier, trying to shoot. A bona fide classic. < less
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La Grande Illusion (Special Edition)
