illusions of our past and present

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2015)

The past year has seen remembrances of the first global war, now known as World War I. This worldwide conflict, one that eventually dissolved empires and set the stage for a second global war, senselessly took the lives of millions of young people all over Europe and spawned a lost generation.
But amid this pointless war, there were instances when people managed to find their common humanity. Jean Renoir's anti-war masterpiece "La Grande Illusion" looks at how a collection of POWs do this. Even the German captain (Erich von Stroheim), presumably the enemy, manages to have some humanity.
It was ironic that the movie got released just as Europe was about to get plunged into a second massive war. One might see it as a warning about what could happen, and that could apply even in the present. Probably the most important scenes are at the end: Maréchal (Jean Gabin) and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) spend time with a German woman widowed by the war; and then they cross into Switzerland, headed for an uncertain future.
Really good movie.