Jean Renoir's thoughtful and humorous treatment of class/national differences in a WWI prison camp.

Rating: 10/10 (27 March 2010)

Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion is a film that certainly requires seeing more than once and special attention should be paid to certain scenes which, the first time around, might easily be neglected. For instance:

Marechal's solitary confinement. When Jean Gabin is imprisoned for a presumed escape attempt and begins to lose his bearings in his isolation, his gentle German guard, Arthur, hands him a harmonica in the hopes that it will keep him occupied. After closing the cell door, Arthur leans in to hear whether Marechal will use the instrument, and upon hearing several notes played, contentedly closes the peephole, hoping he has done his bit to save his ward's sanity. This scene is so simple and yet heartbreaking; the basic gesture of one person reaching out to another to lessen his anguish is incredibly poignant.

The musical rehearsal. When one of the younger soldiers dresses in drag during rehearsal for the prison camp musical (it almost seems like they are in summer camp!), the camera lingers on how the rest of the soldiers, frozen, stare at his feminine apparition, while he mutters, "C'est drole, c'est drole." Yes, the strangeness of men isolated from women and confronted with this ersatz woman is funny, but in a disturbing as well as amusing way. The scene emphasizes the overall unnaturalness to war's destruction of real family units.

The Christmas scene. When Rosenthal and Marechal join with the German (Austrian?)woman who has taken them in during their escape to celebrate Christmas with her young daughter, the peacefulness and the beauty of the most natural family scene in the story shine out. It is especially touching since we know that the two French soldiers are only temporary stand-ins for the husband and brothers that the woman has lost during previous wars. Her isolation, like Gabin's in his imprisonment, has become unbearable to her, and her relief at the companionship of the prisoners of war is immense but frail. Rosenthal's comment that the infant Jesus in the creche in their kitchen is a "long-ago relation" is ironic and heartbreaking given the extreme anti-Semitism lying ahead in the next world war.