sGrand Illusion (La grande illusion)

Released 1937
Stars Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Marcel Dalio, Dita Parlo
Directed by Jean Renoir

"Grand Illusion" is not a movie about a prison escape, nor is it jingoistic in its politics; it's a meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilization. Perhaps that was always a sentimental upper-class illusion, the notion that gentlemen on both sides of the lines subscribed to the same code of behavior. Whatever it was, it died in the trenches of World War I.

"Neither you nor I can stop the march of time," the captured French aristocrat Capt. de Boieldieu tells the German prison camp commandant, Von Rauffenstein. What the Frenchman knows and the German won't admit is that the new world belongs to commoners. It changed hands when the gentlemen of Europe declared war. And the "grand illusion" of Renoir's title is the notion that the upper classes somehow stand above war. The German cannot believe that his prisoners, whom he treats almost as guests, would try to escape. After all, they have given their word not to.

The commandant is played by Erich von Stroheim, in one of the most famous of movie performances. Even many who have not seen the movie can identify stills of the wounded ace pilot von Rauffenstein, his body held rigid by a neck and back brace, his eye squinting through a monocle. De Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay), from an old aristocratic family, is a pilot von Rauffenstein personally shot down earlier in the war. The other two major characters are also French prisoners: Marechal (Jean Gabin), a workingman, a member of the emerging proletariat, and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), a Jewish banker who has ironically purchased the chateau that de Boieldieu's family can no longer afford. The movie, filmed as the clouds of World War II were gathering, uses these characters to illustrate how the themes of the first war would tragically worsen in the second.

Summary by Roger Ebert

The restored film on the DVD is simply gorgeous and looks like it could have been filmed today. The performances are natural and a joy to watch, especially those of Erich von Stroheim and Pierre Fresnay. As for the movie, I'm not sure why it's considered one of the greatest films of all time. I enjoyed it and thought it was brilliant, but I couldn't put it that high because there's no drama or tension. It's a cheerful reverie on the reverent treatment given to officer POWs in WWI, and it's the first WWI movie I've seen that doesn't deal with the horror of the trenches. It intentionally avoids all of that and deals with the chivalry that existed amongst the European nobility for centuries but died when the nobility became obsolete after the Great War. The grand illusion of WWI was how it was the war to end all wars. Sadly, the only way any war could ever achieve that goal would be with the total annihilation of mankind. Short of that, we'll be having wars. People could sense WWII coming in the 1930's--only one generation after WWI. I liked Jean Renoir's  foreshadowing of Hitler's actions with the book burning and the Semitic storyline, and I admire him for making this film at that time. --Bill Alward, December 25, 2001