Great art doesn’t have to be explicit in order to be powerful. A good example can be found in The Grand Illusion, a 1937 French film directed by Jean Renoir, celebrated as the best piece of anti-war cinema despite not showing the war directly. The plot is set during the First World War, or the Great War as it was known at the time of production. In 1916, French aristocratic aviator Captain De Böeldieu (played by Pierre Fresnay) takes his working-class subordinate Lieutenant Maréchal (played by Jean Gabin), a pre-war mechanic, on a routine reconnaissance mission. Their plane is shot down by Rittmeister (Captain) von Rauffenstein (played by Erich von Stroheim), commander of a German fighter squadron. After learning that both men survived the crash and that they are officers, von Rauffenstein invites them to a dinner in their honour, in accordance with military aviators’ customs of the time.
De Böeldieu and Maréchal are later sent to a POW camp where they meet Lieutenant Rosenthal (played by Marcel Dalio), a member of a family of rich Jewish nouveau riche bankers who likes to share food from his parcels with fellow prisoners, enabling them to eat better than their captors. All three men try to escape but their efforts repeatedly fail until they are sent to Wintersborn, a mountain fortress turned into an “inescapable” prison commanded by Rauffenstein, who has been crippled in combat. Despite his efforts to treat prisoners fairly and befriend De Böeldieu, Maréchal, and Rosenthal, they escape with De Böeldieu sacrificing his life to make it possible. The two remaining men embark on a long, dangerous, and exhausting trek towards neutral Switzerland and are forced to take shelter at a farm owned by Elsa (played by Dita Parlo), a German widow whose husband and many family members perished in the war.
For Jean Renoir, The Grand Illusion was a deeply personal film. Like the protagonists, he served in the Great War as a military aviator. The script, co-written with Charles Spaak, was inspired by the wartime adventures of one of his friends who was captured seven times by the Germans only to successfully escape a POW camp each time. The escape story, which serves as the basis for the plot, is used by Renoir as an opportunity to express his thoughts about the war, its unacceptable cost to humanity, and its ultimate absurdity. This is best seen in the scenes where De Böeldieu and von Rauffenstein, despite belonging to opposing sides in the all-consuming conflict, find that they have more in common as members of the European nobility than with their comrades in arms. It is the very old-fashioned notions of duty and honour that compel both men to take part in a conflict they know will destroy their class and the pre-war world.
The futility of war is further underlined when Elsa explains to the two Frenchmen that her family members died in battles celebrated as Germany’s most glorious victories. Near the end, Maréchal and Rosenthal speak of rejoining the war to ensure that nobody should ever have to suffer what they have witnessed. This idea of the Great War as “the war to end all wars,” so popular in the post-WW1 years, looked increasingly distant from reality in the late 1930s, with political developments suggesting a new world war in the near future. Renoir tried to underline this depressive conclusion by referencing The Grand Illusion, a popular 1909 book by British journalist Norman Angell, which argued that a major war in Europe was impossible because it would be against everyone’s interests and that even the winners would be wrecked beyond repair. Angell tragically failed in his prediction, just as all those hoping the Great War would be the last world war were proven wrong two years after Renoir’s film.
Renoir’s message was well-matched by his filmmaking skills, which would ultimately earn The Grand Illusion high rankings in critics’ polls of the best films ever made. This is due not only to the superb black-and-white cinematography by Christian Matras but also to the skilful editing by Marthe Huguet and Marguerite Renoir. The plot, which plays out over months, is shown economically; Renoir, partly due to budget considerations and partly by creative choice, does not show combat or major events like the French aviators being shot down or their repeated escape attempts.
Renoir also enjoyed one of the most formidable casts in cinema history. Erich von Stroheim, one of the most iconic actors of the silent-era Hollywood, who had earned his initial stardom playing cartoonishly villainous Imperial German officers in US wartime propaganda films, here returns to play a similar role in a completely different way. Von Rauffenstein is a man aware of the absurdity and pointlessness of the war he is fighting, yet bound by honour and duty, just like De Böeldieu—who, in one of the film’s most powerful scenes, admits he would do exactly the same if their positions were reversed. Jean Gabin, the greatest French film star of the time and whose casting made the production possible, becomes a central character relatively late in the film but nevertheless wins the audience’s sympathy as someone who retains a degree of normalcy and common sense amid the murderous lunacy of war. Even more normalcy is conveyed by Dita Parlo in the role of an unglamorous German war widow who helps Maréchal restore his humanity. Ironically, this was the last grand role for the German actress, who was deported from France as an enemy alien after the outbreak of the Second World War.
Perhaps the only element that might make The Grand Illusion unworthy of its high reputation is the underwhelming musical score by Joseph Kosma. The film’s own history is full of irony. Its screening at the Venice Film Festival was overshadowed by politics and bans by various governments that found its anti-war message objectionable. Although, by some accounts, Mussolini liked the film, Italy banned it to placate its ally Germany, which had done the same. Because of this, the film could not win the top prize and had to settle for the Best Cast award. When the Second World War broke out, The Grand Illusion was banned by the French government. The last surviving copy of the original negative was believed destroyed by Allied bombing during the German occupation of France, only to be discovered by chance in 1990.
Even in its less-than-perfect condition and despite the bans, The Grand Illusion proved highly influential, with some of its memorable scenes referenced in later Hollywood classics like Casablanca and The Great Escape. And even those who care little about cinema history would likely appreciate this film, not only for the quality of its craft but also because the unlearned lessons about the absurdity and futility of war remain depressingly relevant today.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo
Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax y
Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
