Grand Illusion

"The Grand Illusion" (1937) could mean to represent many things. As one of the escapees mentions at the end, nature has no borders, those are artificial things made by people. Mankind creates many illusions, and Renoir invites us to ask what is the grandest illusion of them all. The film deals with many aspects of class, ethnicity, language, and focuses on the arbitrariness of these differences. These people all know that the war will end, and that a new era will be ushered in that will be more democratic, and that the age of aristocracies will come to an end.

The film is a realist fantasy that Jean Renoir created which focused on the humanity, and friendships, of the people. We don't really see much in the way of fighting, or any other such things, which are common to most war films. The little fighting that does occur lacks any of the drama often depicted in war films. The drama of war is not glorified here since it has no value for Renoir. He is interested in the people, not the drama of war. Goebbels cited the movie as being the "Cinematic Public Enemy No.1". This film was dangerous for the German war effort because it showed that those who were not German were human too. For Renoir, war, and its creation of false beliefs and goals, was a grand illusion.

"The Grand Illusion," ("La Grande Illusion") (1937) is a war drama, another of the classic black and white masterpieces of the French cinema. It stars the magnetic Jean Gabin (Essential Art House: Le Jour se Lève); and was directed by that acclaimed master, Jean Renoir(Jean Renoir 3-Disc Collector's Edition (Whirlpool of Fate / Nana / Charleston Parade / La Marseillaise / The Doctor's Horrible Experiment / The Elusive Corporal)): he of the painterly eye, son of the world-famous, greatly-loved, impressionist artist Pierre Auguste Renoir.

It concerns two French soldiers -- blue-collar Lt. Maréchal (Gabin), and genteel Capt. de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay--The Fanny Trilogy) who strive to overcome their differences while plotting their escape from German prisoner of war camps during World War I. Meanwhile, de Boieldieu finds a kindred spirit among his captors in a patrician German officer Capt Von Rauffenstein (an unforgettable performance by actor/director Erich von Stroheim--Five Graves to Cairo [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Spain ]). Marcel Dalio (so significant as the casino dealer in Casablanca (Snap Case)) costars as Lt. Rosenthal, a wealthy French Jew, and a friend of Marechal's. It also boasts a passel of one-name actors, presumably from the Comedie Francaise. It's genre film-making at its best, considered one of the first prison-break movies ever made, and one of the finest anti-war movies ever made.

Jean Renoir was a Communist and a humanist who looked at the proletariat with an unusually sympathetic eye, and if this magnificent film does anything, it clearly lays out the rigid class distinctions of the period. The acting is uniformly topnotch. It is, of course, beautifully and expressively filmed: the scenes in the ancient castle, retrofitted to be what was considered to be an impossible to escape prisoner of war camp, where Rauffenstein rules, are simply superb. It also illustrates one more time, though it was hardly needed, that Gabin was catnip to women. Renoir has been quoted as saying that people told him he made a great anti-war movie in 1937, but movies clearly don't have any influence on real life, because three years later World War II, the most destructive of all wars, broke out. However, the fact that "Grand Illusion" hasn't prevented any wars doesn't mean that you shouldn't see it.

I'm a geek. I'm actually the sort of pathetic egghead who goes online and watches free webcasts of university lectures for entertainment. So, a few years ago I was watching the webcast of a UC Berkeley course on social psychology; and, as one of the assignments in this course, the professor had his students watch the classic 1937 French film "La grande illusion" ("Grand Illusion"), and write a paper about how the characters in the movie see themselves, and relate to each other, largely in terms of the various socially-defined roles they occupy. According to the professor, this film does an excellent job of illustrating how personal identity, interpersonal relations, and group solidarity are often the product of what are essentially arbitrary lines of distinction that have been drawn for us by the society we live in -- distinctions based on social constructs such as nationality, language, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, class, wealth, education, occupation, rank, etc. -- which we often just take for granted without ever questioning their legitimacy or whether they even make sense. The professor's comments about the movie intrigued me; so I decided I'd have to watch it sooner or later. Unfortunately, it ended up being later rather than sooner; but I eventually managed to watch it.

And I liked it. It was a good movie. Its exploration of how identity and relationships are often socially constructed was much subtler than I had imagined it would be based on the professor's comments; but it's definitely there if you look for it. The film also presents a subtle, yet masterful, commentary about the absurdity of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and war. It's no wonder that Hitler had this movie banned.

The film was made just two years before the outbreak of the Second World War, at a time when the clouds of impending war were already looming over Europe. There can be little doubt that director Jean Renoir (son of celebrated Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir) intended this movie to convey an anti-war message; but he didn't feel the need to bash the audience over the head with that message. This film is not at all "preachy" in its pacifism, unlike that other great anti-war movie of the 1930s, "All Quiet on the Western Front", which openly laments the horrors of war and the folly of jingoism. Renoir is far more subtle in his approach to the subject. Both films are set during the First World War, and deal with the experiences of the ordinary men who were called upon to fight that war. But "La grande illusion" takes us away from the front lines and the hellish nightmares of trench warfare that are the focus of "All Quiet on the Western Front", and takes us instead to the surreal tranquility of prisoner of war camps deep inside Germany, where captured French, Russian, British, and American officers are being held. To these prisoners, taken out of the fight, the war is little more than a distant rumor, and yet they live the war every day. They have much closer contact with the enemy than do any of their comrades back in the trenches; but this contact lacks the intense hostility of front-line combat. Prisoners and guards in the POW camps are in a position to see each other as fellow human beings, not merely as faceless enemies occupying opposite sides of a smoke-covered battlefield. So, by looking at the war from the perspective of the POW camps instead of the trenches, we can clearly see the absurdity of decent people -- people who could have been friends under different circumstances -- fighting each other to the death based solely on which side of an imaginary line they happened to have been born. Renoir doesn't need to go out of his way to point this out to us. It's obvious. So he lets us draw our own conclusions and leaves the sermonizing for others.

Likewise, Renoir doesn't feel the need to lecture us about the way that people's identities, relationships, and loyalties are shaped by arbitrary, socially-constructed distinctions. All he has to do is show us how people interact, and we can see it for ourselves. It is often quite subtle; but it's there. The old adage in filmmaking is: "Show, don't tell." So, if the mark of a great filmmaker is the ability to get an idea across to the audience without just blurting it out, then Jean Renoir is a great filmmaker. On the surface, this is simply an entertaining movie about an escape attempt by French POWs during the Great War. But look beneath the surface to the subtext and you'll find something far more profound. No wonder "La grande illusion" is considered a cinematic masterpiece.

As for the DVD, this particular edition contains just the film, with no special features. If you're looking for a version that has lots of bonus material, you'll have to get a different edition. (I believe that multiple editions are available on Amazon; so look around.) All I really cared about was the film itself; so I chose the least expensive DVD I could find. In case you're wondering, the film is in black & white, and has a running time of just a little under two hours. Most of the dialogue is in French and German, with just a few lines of English and Russian thrown in here and there. This DVD has English subtitles that are on by default; though you are given the option of turning them off.

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