Grand Illusion | La Grande illusion (1937)

Synopsis

One of the very first prison escape movies, Grand Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made.

Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay, as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim as the unforgettable Captain von Rauffenstein. -- The Criterion Collection



Cast: Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim

It's long been one of the revered classics of international cinema, but there is no fine layer of dust over La Grande Illusion.

Jean Renoir's film is just as vibrant, exciting, and wise as it has ever been.

The story is set during World War I, mostly in a couple of German POW camps, where two very different French prisoners plot to escape: the working-class officer Maréchal (Jean Gabin, the French Spencer Tracy) and the upper-class de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay).

The suspenseful backbone of the story is formed by these escape attempts, but Renoir is primarily concerned with the way people treat each other, and especially with how class and nationality inform human relations. 

 Most compelling of all the film's characters is the aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, unforgettably incarnated by stiff-backed Erich von Stroheim; although he runs a prison camp, von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with de Boieldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility.

There is nothing dewy or naive about Renoir's vision (and two years after the release of this antiwar film, Europe was plunged into another world war), yet Grand Illusion is one of those movies that makes you feel good about such long-outmoded ideas as sacrifice and brotherhood.

After it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared the film "Cinematographic Enemy Number One." There can be no higher praise. -- Amazon.com

Read about this film

Country: France
Language: French | German | English
Color: Black and White
Runtime: 114 min.