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Grand Illusion / La Grande Illusion (1937)[The Criterion Collection #1] [REPOST]

Posted By: Notsaint

Date: 17 Aug 2013 12:34:11

One of the very first prison escape movies, Grand Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay, as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim as the unforgettable Captain von Rauffenstein. Following a smash theatrical re-release, Criterion is proud to present Grand Illusion in a new special edition, with a beautifully restored digital transfer.

The Criterion Collection

Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Julien Carette, Georges Peclet, Werner Florian, Jean Daste, Sylvain Itkine, Gaston Modot, Marcel Dalio, Jacques Becker, Habib Benglia, Pierre Blondy, Albert Brouett, George Forster, Karl Heil, Carl Koch, Little Peters, Claude Sainval, Michel Salina, Claude Vernier

IMDb

During 1st WW, two French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life. They meet other prisoners from various backgrounds, as Rosenthal, son of wealthy Jewish bankers. They are separated from Rosenthal before managing to escape. A few months later, they meet again in a fortress commanded by the aristocrat Van Rauffenstein. De Boeldieu strikes up a friendship with him but Marechal and Rosenthal still want to escape…
~ Yepok

DVDTalk

In film school they called it one of the greatest films ever made, considered the best by film critics everywhere until Citizen Kane came along. Then they showed us the worst faded, scratched, broken and muffled-sounding print imaginable, with subtitles seemingly designed to obscure the story. Those of us who didn't fall asleep, got headaches. But one of the bonus prizes of the spate of '90s restorations is this completely refurbished DVD of Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion, which before was almost impossible to fully appreciate. Now it's clear just why it's considered a great movie.

Made in 1937 in a Europe sliding toward a war more terrible than anyone could imagine, The Grand Illusion is technically a pacifist statement, along the lines of Gance's two versions of J'accuse, where the ghosts of dead soldiers return from the dead to accuse the living of once again allowing war, and Pabst's Kameradschaft, in which the guarded frontier is opened just long enough for German miners to rescue some trapped French comrades. Both of those films, made earlier in the '30s when war was not imminent, are fairly strident message pictures. The Grand Illusion is just as emotional, but its subject matter encompasses a larger picture of Europe with its hopes and promises, and problems.

With its restored minutes and more accurate subtitles, The Grand Illusion starts off almost the same as The Great Escape. The captured prisoners endure the same kinds of hardships and find ways to get along with their captors and the prisoners of other nationalities. There are even plans for an escape. But, as the noble de Boieldieu and the 'common', Jewish Rosenthal find out, class distinctions remain intact even in war and even through the veneer of masculine comradeship that most war films elevate to ridiculous extremes. Rosenthal is a wealthy Frenchman, and the parcels his family sends him instantly create resentments. De Boieldieu is a good sort, but maintains a consistently superior attitude.

Writers Renoir and Spaak portray the bigotry very subtly, matter-of-factly, yet make it an important influence on all that happens. Our middle-class hero, the cheerful Mareechal, is just as prone to personal prejudices as anyone else. And Rosenthal can be blind to the feelings of others, too.

They say generals always try to fight new wars with the outmoded strategies of old wars; The Grand Illusion shows it's not focused on the 1937 situation by its attention to the role that nobility played in WW1. For the aristocrats, their station as superior people is of more importance than the war itself; von Rauffenstein especially seems obsessed with the success or failure of his search for his noble destiny, which a flying accident has thwarted. In WW2 films, officers and men often function on equal terms, but back in this age of privilege, the officers are officers simply by right of noble birth, and the automatic advantages of their class assure them separate treatment at all times. The French and German Captains behave with undisturbed gentility toward one another, even right after combat; von Rauffenstein's solicitude indicates a loyalty to class that supercedes nationalism. The Grand Illusion shows them both at their chivalrous best, even as it brands the entire world of royalty and privilege as fundamentally rotten. WW1 swept away much of the power of that system, but Renoir seems to indicate that Europe will have to abandon it totally before anything like a fair society can emerge. If there's anything like a symbol here, it's the rigid harness that keeps von Rauffenstein's injured back in line, a corset that makes him behave with the unnatural stiffness of his aristocratic class. This is a role von Stroheim was born to play.

Unlike The Great Escape, the 'escape' here is neither exhilarating nor swift. Two of the prisoners walk halfway across Germany in the dead of winter, hoping to reach the frontier, across a landscape left barren because the farmers have all been conscripted to fight. They come across the farm of war widow Else (Dita Parlo, of the classic L'Atlante) and stay a spell, entertaining Else's tiny daughter while trying to figure out the best time to make for the border. The enemy is revealed to be a touchingly forlorn woman, mourning the loss of her brothers and husband. There is a Christmas scene involving a manger display made from carved potatoes that is one of the most moving ever filmed. If the de Boieldieus and von Rauffensteins devalue war in favor of their class concerns, the two escapees see only the need to survive and the desire to lead decent lives. War, nations, enemies and borders no longer mean anything to them. Nazi Germany, naturally, immediately banned The Grand Illusion upon release.