La Grande Illusion: Difference between revisions

La Grande Illusion is a 1937 film by renown director Jean Renoir (1894-1979)—son of artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir—is regarded by critics and film historians as one of the masterpieces of French cinema. The screenplay was written by Renoir and Charles Spaak.

In English-speaking countries, the film was released as Grand Illusion.

A brief history of the film

Grand Illusion was released in 1937 to much critical acclaim. Even as late as 1970, almost every credible list of the top ten best films in cinematic history included the film.

In 1938, Grand Illusion was the first foreign language film nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Academy Award for Best Picture (often better known as Oscar). The film won as Best Foreign Film award at the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

After it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared the film "Cinematic Public Enemy Number One" and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister, ordered the prints to be confiscated and destroyed.

As the German Army marched into France in 1940 during the World War II, the Nazis seized the prints and negative of the film, chiefly because of its anti-war message, and what were percieved as ideological criticisms pointed towards Germany on the eve of the Second World War. For many years, the negative was thought to have been destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1942, and prints of the film were only rediscovered in 1958. Subsequent to its rediscovery, it was preserved and restored during the early 1960s and re-released.

The original negative was captured by Russians as they occupied Berlin in 1945 and shipped to an archive in Moscow. Oddly enough, it returned to France in the 1960s, and sat unidentified in storage in Toulouse for over 30 years as no one thought the original negative survived. When discovered, in the 1990s, the original negative was restored and released as the inaugural DVD of the Criterion Collection, and is regarded as the most precise edition of the film since its 1937 premiere.

The story

During the First World War, two French aviators Captain de Boeldieu (played by Pierre Fresnay) and Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), embark on a flight to examine the site of a blurred spot on photos from an earlier air reconnaissance mission. They are shot down by an aviator and German aristocrat, Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim). Von Rauffenstein, upon returning to base, states that he has shot down a French plane and instructs one of his subordinates to find out if the aviators are officers, and if so, invite them to lunch before dispatching them to a Prisoner of War camp. During this scene we learn that von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu know each other through acquaintances, portraying the social connections of the aristocracy across Europe leading up to the first World War.

De Boeldieu and Maréchal are then placed in a camp, where they meet and befriend their fellow countrymen. Soon after their arrival, they participate in an attempt by their comrades to dig a tunnel underneath the camp to escape. However, just before the tunnel is completed, they are forced to switch camps, and are unable to pass word to the incoming prisoners regarding the existence of the tunnel.

During the course of the war, Boeldieu and Maréchal are placed in camp after camp, arriving in Wintersborn, commanded by Von Rauffenstein who has since their last meeting been disabled in battle and reassigned. Wintersborn, it is alleged, is inescapable, but we soon learn that Boeldieu and Maréchal have a history of valiant escape attempts.

At Wintersborn, Boeldieu and Maréchal meet one of their fellow prisoners from an earlier camp, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), a wealthy Jew. The three together conspire ways to escape, paying close attention to how the German guards respond to emergencies. Boeldieu concedes that their plan can only serve two, and suggests that Maréchal and Rosenthal escape, while he serves to draw the German guards' attention as they get away. After some commotion, the guards order an assembly of the prisoners in the fortress courtyard, and proceed to call the roll. When de Boeldieu's name is called he is not present in the assembly, and as they realize his absence, he makes his presence known high up in the fortress, drawing the German guards in pursuit. Maréchal and Rosenthal take the opportunity during the pursuit to lower themselves from a window by a home-made rope and flee.

In a poignant sequence, von Rauffenstein and his guards corner de Boeldieu, and plead for him to give up. De Boeldieu refuses, and Rauffenstein reluctantly shoots him. Nursed in his final moments by von Rauffenstein, de Boeldieu dies of his wounds expressing, in his last thoughts, pity for his fellow aristocrat and lamenting that their usefulness to society (as aristocrats) ends with this war.

The film continues with the plight of the fugitives Maréchal and Rosenthal as they journey across the German countryside seeking a route back to France. Rosenthal gets injured, slowing up the duo, and the two men take refuge in the barn of a German woman, Elsa (Dita Parlo), who has been widowed by the war. She generously takes in the two men. Maréchal begins to fall in love with her, but the he and Rosenthal must eventually leave for Switzerland (and from there to France), although Marechal promises to come back if he survives. As the film closes, a squadron of German soldiers patrolling the border catch up to the two fugitives, fire a few volleys, but are ordered to let them go, as they have apparently crossed the snow-covered, invisible Swiss border.

The politics of the film

It has a very strong anti-war message and portrays both the French prisoners and German captors in a sympathetic light. It is also one of the first films about an escape from a Prisoner of War camp.

One of the recurrent themes running through it is the difficulty that we face in overcoming the barriers of language and class; the optimistic message of the movie is that at least some of these barriers can be overcome with enough persistence. Maréchal, the character played by Jean Gabin, finally learns to speak a few words of German, although not quite correctly; Dita Parlo, who plays Elsa, speaks a few halting words in French.

On the other hand, those characters who already understand each other — the aristocrats de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) — and feel a bond of kinship that transcends national divisions also understand that their days are numbered. One of them kills the other; the one who survives considers his friend and victim to be the lucky one.

Cast

Jean Gabin as Lieutenant Maréchal, a French officer

Erich von Stroheim as Captain von Rauffenstein, a German officer

Dita Parlo as Elsa, a widowed German farm woman

Pierre Fresnay as Captain de Boeldieu, a French officer

Marcel Dalio as Lieutenant Rosenthal, a French officer

Julien Carette as the showoff

Georges Péclet as An officer

Werner Florian as Sgt. Arthur

Jean Dasté as The teacher

Sylvain Itkine as Lieutenant Demolder

Gaston Modot as The engineer

Several members of the cast were not listed in the film's credits (as was common in early films) including:

Jacques Becker as an English officer

Albert Brouett as a prisoner

Claude Sainval as Ringis

Carl Koch

Michel Salina

Trivia

• Jean Renoir was an aviator for the French Army during World War I, actor Jean Gabin (as Maréchal) wears Renoir's uniform in the film.

• According to Renoir's memoirs, Erich von Stroheim, despite being born in [{Vienna]], Austria (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire) did not speak much German, and struggled learning the language along with his lines in between filming scenes.

• As the first movie depicting an escape from a Prisoner of War camp, scenes in Grand Illusion have influenced other films in the genre, especially influencing the digging of an escape tunnel in The Great Escape (1963).

• Likewise, the scene of the French prisoners singing La Marseillaise—the French National Anthem—to enrage their German prison guards, inspired a similar show of patriotic resistance in Casablanca (1942).

• The dialogue in the Grand Illusion passes through four languages (French, German, English and Russian), and was the only feature film made in the Western Hemisphere to do so until The Red Violin (1999).

See also

• Cinema of France
• List of French language films

External links

• La Grande illusion at the [www.imdb.com Internet Movie Database]
• Roger Ebert's 1999 review of Grand Illusion