Grand Illusion

I saw Renoir’s amazing film for the first time over the holidays at the Cleveland Museum of Art and I immediately fell in love with it. It’s a war film (kind of) that truly manages to express the beauty of life:

A film about war without a single scene of combat, Jean Renoir’s 1937 masterpiece about French and German officers during World War I suggests that the true divisions of that conflict were of class rather than nationality. The point is embodied in the friendship between two aristocratic officers, a German (Erich von Stroheim, in his greatest performance in a sound film) and a Frenchman (Pierre Fresnay), both of whom ultimately become sacrificial victims after a nouveau riche Jewish officer (Marcel Dalio) and a French mechanic (Jean Gabin) manage to escape from Stroheim’s fortress to freedom. The relationship between the mechanic and a German widow (L’Atalante’s Dita Parlo), who barely speak each other’s language, is no less moving. The film doesn’t have the polyphonic brilliance of Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, made two years later, but it’s still one of the key humanist expressions to be found in movies: sad, funny, exalting, and glorious. [Jonathan Rosenbaum]

As I said in my 81 for 81 look at All Quiet on the Western Front, war is too often glamorized today and what I love about The Grand Illusion is that it manages to express the downside of war without putting any combat on screen - taking away any coolness the violence and destruction would have.

Plus 1) it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars®, which is awesome for a foreign film and 2)this is without a doubt one of my favorite lines of dialogue ever:

Lieutenant Rosenthal: Frontiers are an invention of men. Nature doesn’t give a hoot.

Watch this film to see how it pushed the envelope and then takepart with United for Peace and Justice.

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