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| The dove of freedom dies gruesomely on the barbed wire inside of a war-time soldier ensconced in grey on this evocative, artsy poster for Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion |
We follow some mainly French soldiers in a German POW camp during World War I, their brotherhood amongst themselves, and even with their enemies, - and eventually their escape from said camp.
La Grande Illusion is written by Charles Spaak (Two Women/L'Empreinte du Dieu (1940)) and great French co-writer/director Jean Renoir (Whirlpool of Fate/La Fille de l'Eau (1925)). The film features a rebellion using flutes! And towards the end of the story we follow two of the prisoners, who now co-habitate with a German women, again in a striking harmony.
This is a very fine film about humanism on a profound level. The proposed humanity, in the context of the First World War, - and one inevitably also watches it and reflects on the Second World War, - seems somehow escapist, though, in its strange, combat-free idealization. Still the film attains rare moments of brotherhood while it commits a powerful portrayal of the illusion behind humanly made grand conflicts, which has made it an especially scholarly favorite.
Related post:
Jean Renoir: Top 10: Best French movies
The Human Beast/La Bête Humaine/Judas Was a Woman (1938) or, Train of Love, Lust and Murder!
Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain - but seemingly at least a box office success
[La Grande Illusion premiered 8 June (Paris) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place in France from February - May 1937. Jean Gabin (Their Last Night/Leur Dernière Nuit (1953)) wore Renoir's aviator's uniform from the war, in which he actually served in France's air force. The film reportedly sold the incredible amount of 12.5 mil. tickets in production country France. However, fearing its possibly detrimental impact on the national fighting moral, the French authorities banned the film in 1940 for as long as the Second World War would last. In Germany, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels declared the film "cinematic public enemy no. 1", and Nazi troops seized prints and negatives of the film, when they marched into France in 1940. La Grande Illusion became the first foreign film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, which it lost to You Can't Take It with You. It won 3 National Board of Review awards, a prize at the Venice Film Festival and a few other honors. Regrettably neither the cost nor the gross numbers are known, but the film is recorded to have made 174k $ in a 2012 North-American re-release. No doubt if the huge French admissions tally is correct, La Grande Illusion was at least a box office success. The film was nearly lost due to the Second World War and the few left prints were scattered in Germany and later the Soviet Union. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Renoir returned with La Marseillaise (1938). Gabin returned in The Messenger/Le Messager (1937); Pierre Fresnay (Les Affreux (1959)) in La Bataille Silencieuse (1937); and Erich von Stroheim (The Honeymoon (1930)) in Under Secret Orders (1937). La Grande Illusion is certified fresh at 97 % with a 9.37/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of La Grande Illusion?
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