When world leaders disagree...

Rating: 8/10 (13 September 2017)

An R.A.C. (Realisation d'Art Cinematographique) Production. Parisian premiere: 30 June 1937 at the Marivaux Cinema. Copyright 15 January 1938 by World Pictures Corporation. New York opening at the Filmarte: 12 September 1938. Australian release through Continental Art Films: 8 June 1939. 10 reels. 113 minutes.
U.S. and Australian release title: GRAND ILLUSION (cut to 96 minutes).
SYNOPSIS: French fliers plan an escape from a German prison camp.
NOTES: Nominated for Hollywood's most prestigious annual award for Best Film of 1938, which was won by "You Can't Take It With You". Best Foreign Film of 1938. – The National Board of Review (New York). Best Foreign Film of 1938. – New York Film Critics.
COMMENT: Here is the daddy of all the POW movies that became so popular in the 1950s and 1960s. All the familiar ingredients are here, including the fatal escape, the camp concert, the underground tunnel, the dispersal of earth in the garden, the by-the-book German commandant, the transfer to another camp, the surly guards, the friendly guards, the long-awaited parcels from home, the boredom, the ribaldry, the mocking defiance of regulations. Yes, it's all here. So why did the film make such a varied impression on world leaders in its first release that its reputation still shines with such brilliance today? It's all about class, you see. The dying race of aristocrats, personified here by Fresnay and Von Stroheim, who must ultimately give way to the proletariat led by down-to-earth philosophers like Jean Gabin's garage mechanic or Carette's lecherous comedian. And yes, those elements are present in the movie, albeit accidentally, because Von Stroheim's part had to be enlarged when he was signed to play the commandant. However, it's good to say that Von Stroheim was not overawed by Renoir and still managed to invest his role with a few characteristic quirks and attention-getting bits of business.
Don't get me wrong, I like the movie. The screenplay packs in plenty of suspense, it's well acted (particularly by two of my favorite players, Gabin and the Von), smoothly directed, atmospherically photographed and most capably produced. On the whole, I'd give it at least eight out of ten. (I thought the Dita Parlo scenes came as a bit of an anti- climax. They went on far too long, but I suppose you couldn't hope to make money in 1937 with a movie that had no feminine lead. Yet once you've got her in place, you've got to give her something to do). However, The Great Illusion is most certainly anti-war in its sentiments, doesn't glorify its horrors or turn them into a great adventure—and that's something to be proud of.
One of the characters rightly exclaims that his greatest problem in coping with his incarceration lies in the monotony of living day by day in a state of sheer boredom. War is inhuman on every level.
OTHER VIEWS: The finest film ever made. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt... Cinematographic enemy number one. – Joseph Goebbels... An excellent film in every respect, La Grande Illusion deserves the widest praise. – Hermann Goering... A degrading and divisive motion picture. – Henri Spaak (brother of Charles Spaak) who banned the film from exhibition in Belgium... A brilliant and inspiring film which cannot be praised too highly. – Louis-Ferdinand Céline... Stupid, insulting and deliberately perverse, the movie should be shunned by everyone. – Benito Mussolini.