Renoir's The Grande Illusion

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2019)

Jean Renoir's The Grande Illusion is an incredibly powerful piece of cinema featuring Renoir's signature blocking and camera that carries on throughout his career. The star studded cast(for the 30s) all give great performances throughout. Pierre Fresnay and Eric von Stroheim as Boeldieu and Rauffenstein respectively are particular standouts, since their relationships and seeming naturally born chemistry embody the anti war themes of the entire film. The two actors, considering they are only featured in the first half of the film, do a phenomenal job with the amount of screentime they have.
The second act of the film(the film is split into two distinct acts), continues the stories of only two of the main six characters from act one. Jean Gabin as Merachel, and Marcel Dailo as Rosenthal. While the first act of the film follows that of a prison break the second act follows the structure of a tragic love story. Minus a small amount of plot intracatesy, the only thing connecting these two acts is a long ongoing, underlying theme of the prison of war.
The grande illusion in this movie's case could easily be argued to be the idea of peace time as war hlds holds all of these characters captive. Renoir's opinions on nationalism and imperialism are clear as the audience sees these characters never have a happy ending that they all crave. Really, the only issue with this film is that much of the first half of the film are characters participating in hijinxs, which makes it clear that the amount of actual plot needed to be told does not justify a nearly two hour run time.
Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion gets a 9/10.