La Grande Illusion
FR 114m Dir: Jean Renoir Key Cast: Jean Gabin and Erich von Stroheim
Watching war films that we were made between the First and Second World Wars is really interesting. Whilst many films made after the Second World War pitch themselves as a heroic story, films made between the wars largely seemed to have a strong anti-war sentiment and pitch war as futile.
Several French soldiers including modest former mechanic Maréchal, rich Jewish man Rosenthal and aristocrat de Boëldieu are captured by German forces and become prisoners of war. They attempt to escape but are then shipped off to an extremely secure castle run by Captain von Rauffenstein, a German aristocrat.
Given this is a war film it's perhaps surprising that there isn't any real combat shown. It's really all about the people and how they are all human and despite their differences find things in common with each other. There's a moment when a German woman tells of her brothers who all died in Germany's supposed victories, really selling the idea that the whole thing is futile.
There's some interesting class stuff here too. Boëldieu and Rauffenstein form a friendship because they are both aristocrats. It's depicted that the time of the aristocrat is over and will be replaced with a new social order where leaders are not born into prejudice with Boëldieu seeing this an improvement and Rauffenstien disagreeing. Perhaps Jean Renoir had a point about this changing class system though here in the UK it still feels like we are ruled by aristocrats.
The working class characters are very different to each other but find themselves getting along due to their shared experiences. Renoir directly responds to the growing anti-Semitism in Europe of the time by having Jewish character Rosenthal rebuff Jewish stereotypes, depicting him as generous to a fault. There's also a brilliant moment that feels like it's from a far more recent film where a black soldier is apparently completely ignored by the other soldiers. It may have been fairly subtle but Renoir's desire to depict humanity as equal is admirable.
Nazi Germany utterly despised this film with Goebbels declaring it "Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1". It feels to me that if Nazi's hate your film and go out of their way to stop people seeing it that it is doing something right. On a broad level it depicts the futility of war and in smaller ways it strongly pushes against the whole Nazi ideology.
A hugely important film and with war once again raging in Europe it's clear the lessons it tries to teach have not been learned.
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