The Way War Was ...

Rating: 10/10 (11 April 2012)

We learned from "Paths of Glory", "All Quiet on the West Front" and any History book, what a disastrous slaughter World War I was. But the purpose of Jean Renoir's "Grand Illusion" is less to demonstrate the hellish than the futile nature of War. Futile because usually instigated by upper classes in the name of profit, greed and imperialism (usually disguised as patriotism) while all the working-class people share the same desire to live in peace, harmony and solidarity. The tragedy of War is to make people believe in an illusory adversity while they're equal in life  and naturally, in death.
This vision of war might surprise but this is Renoir's vision, it belongs to HIS generation, who grew up with a war still conducted by gentlemen, where the purpose was admittedly to defend a country but not to turn people into killing machines. Renoir, despite his military background, loathed the zealous and dehumanizing devotion to the Army, as he said in the film's commentary, the point of showing the rifle was not to learn a series of precise movements like a robot, but just to show a goddamn clean rifle. With that in mind, we understand the soldiers' cordiality in "Grand Illusion" and the peculiar way they were treated by the enemy.
And on that aspect, the context of the film couldn't have been more significant as Nazism, the ideology that annihilated so many pillars of European civilization, hadn't undermined yet Renoir's nostalgic feeling; Germans were still 'good enemies'. We can assume that a film like "Grand Illusion" could never have been made after World War II although it's the very conflict that highlighted the film's prophetic value. Indeed, "Grand Illusion" belongs to the Greats, it was Orson Welles' favorite movie and it has always been compared to the glorious "Citizen Kane" in terms of impact on the field of filmmaking, as one of the first truly humanistic dramas. But as odd as it sounds, it's not to "Citizen Kane" that I feel like comparing "Grand Illusion" but to another masterpiece named "Gone With the Wind".
"Grand Illusion" is also about an Order, a 'Civilization of Chivalry and Gallantry' forever gone. It is the swan song of the Old Europe that died with World War I, and which is incarnated by two characters: Pierre Fresnay as Captain De Boeldieu captured by the Germans with Lieutenant Maréchal, and Erich Von Stroheim as the iconic Von Rauffenstein. "De" and "Von" are the two prefixes that define the European aristocracy and both Boeldieu and Rauffenstein realize during the lunch following the capture, that they have many acquaintances and are familiar with the same things. Maréchal, the blue-collar officer played by a young and handsome Jean Gabin, is more down to earth and engages an even friendlier exchange with a German alter ego.
The lunch scene sets up the tone of the film where the relationships between French, Russian and British prisoners and the German soldiers flirt so much with a 'comedy of manners' that it puts the whole meaning of 'War' into perspective. Renoir resisted the temptation to make a conventional war film and serves us in three distinct acts, a beautiful tale of humanity and friendship. The first act is the ancestor of all the POW movies such as "The Great Escape" or "Stalag 17" where we'd meet a colorful gallery of French prisoners, digging a tunnel. They're well treated and sometimes eat better than their guards, thanks to Rosenthal a rich Jew, played by Marcel Dalio, who shares his goods with his fellow prisoners. Rosenthal incarnates the new wealth of France who'd ultimately be the target of the Anti-Semitism ignited by the Nazi occupation.
The first act climaxes with the superb scene where a cross-gender musical number is interrupted by the announcement of the Douaumont Fort taken back by the French army, and in a patriotic outburst lead by Maréchal, the prisoners start singing "La Marseillaise" in a powerful and stirring moment that inspired "Casablanca". The second act takes place in a fortress where Boeldieu and Maréchal, after a series of failing escapes, are affected. The part centers on the friendship between Rauffenstein and Boeldieu, two men aware that their world is about to collapse, regardless of their nationality. They speak English in the most intimate moments as to denote their similar cosmopolitanism, before a new generation would embrace modernity, for the better and for the worse. It's a poignant transition incarnated by the sacrifice of Boeldieu, playing with the flute, the famous 'steamboat' child song that related a sacrifice story.
Boeldieu's courageous act created a diversion that allowed Maréchal and Rosenthal to escape, and after this display of humanity and a poignant deathbed farewell between the two aristocrat officers, we follow Gabin and Dalio, in their struggle to cross the Swiss border, concluding in an anticlimactic way by their journey in a German farmhouse, inhabited by Elsa (Dita Parlo), a young widow and mother. They stay a while to recover from injuries and hunger until Christmas. Elsa proved to be trustful when she saved them from the German army, an act due to the fact that she also suffered from the loss of brothers, ironically, in three German victories. Victory is such an illusion when it comes to death, but it's the very illusion of borders that would save the life of Maréchal and Rosenthal when a group of German soldiers refuse to shoot them because they are in the Swiss territory.
For a war movie, "Grand Illusion" strikes by an unusual absence of battles and fight scenes. Uniforms and brief but powerful occurrences of death remind of the historical setting but overall, "Grand Illusion" is an atypical war film, whose atypical message is precisely what elevated it at the rank of the greatest movies ever made. And that Joseph Goebbels named it 'Enemy Public Number 1' is probably the proof of its undeniable value.