La grande illusion (1937)
(Grand Illusion)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Synopsis:
During the First World War, three captured French soldiers, a prole, a Jew and an aristocratic officer, are moved from camp to camp and try to escape, but they are victims of one kind of illusion or another.
Review:
The man of the people (Gabin) wants to finish the war to ensure there will be no others; the toff (Fresnay) is aware he will be an anachronism after the war and so finds satisfaction in self-sacrifice. It is up to the viewer to decide which is 'la grande'. Renoir's masterpiece builds the anti-war argument in the subtlest of ways, merely by showing the soldiers on both sides being humane, sidebar to the optimism surrounding the Front Populaire victory, no doubt. In retrospect, of course, it carries the portentous conviction of prefiguring the gathering storm of 1939.
(Grand Illusion)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Synopsis:
During the First World War, three captured French soldiers, a prole, a Jew and an aristocratic officer, are moved from camp to camp and try to escape, but they are victims of one kind of illusion or another.
Review:
The man of the people (Gabin) wants to finish the war to ensure there will be no others; the toff (Fresnay) is aware he will be an anachronism after the war and so finds satisfaction in self-sacrifice. It is up to the viewer to decide which is 'la grande'. Renoir's masterpiece builds the anti-war argument in the subtlest of ways, merely by showing the soldiers on both sides being humane, sidebar to the optimism surrounding the Front Populaire victory, no doubt. In retrospect, of course, it carries the portentous conviction of prefiguring the gathering storm of 1939.
(Grand Illusion)
Country: FR
Technical: bw 117m
Director: Jean Renoir
Cast: Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim
Synopsis:
During the First World War, three captured French soldiers, a prole, a Jew and an aristocratic officer, are moved from camp to camp and try to escape, but they are victims of one kind of illusion or another.
Review:
The man of the people (Gabin) wants to finish the war to ensure there will be no others; the toff (Fresnay) is aware he will be an anachronism after the war and so finds satisfaction in self-sacrifice. It is up to the viewer to decide which is 'la grande'. Renoir's masterpiece builds the anti-war argument in the subtlest of ways, merely by showing the soldiers on both sides being humane, sidebar to the optimism surrounding the Front Populaire victory, no doubt. In retrospect, of course, it carries the portentous conviction of prefiguring the gathering storm of 1939.